Formula 1 design legend Adrian Newey may be well known for having produced some of his best work at his drawing board, but that is not actually his preferred way of pushing ideas forward.
Instead, in a fascinating insight into the process he is going through at Aston Martin to help create its 2026 F1 challenger, Newey has revealed that he actually prefers spending time with others outside his office.
That is because he thinks the key for Aston Martin to achieve success is not just to rely on his input.
Instead, he considers it essential that the team harnesses the creativity of all its engineers, so ideas sharing is an important part of that process.
In an interview conducted on behalf of Aston Martin principal sponsor Ma'aden that was released on Thursday, Newey has opened up about how his time is currently divided up at the factory.
"We are a team of around 300 engineers," said Newey. "Collaboration of course is the most important single aspect and in many ways more than individual talents within the organisation.
"It's how we all work together [and] make sure that we communicate and we extract the most from each other.
"For me personally, what does that mean? Well, it means I spend probably around 50% of my day at the moment working with the other engineers, either at a one-to-one level, gathered around a CAD [computer-aided design] station, or in meetings.
"I generally, if I'm honest, prefer the former, because I think one-to-one meetings are quite often where you can do the brainstorm ones.
"The big meetings, if you're not careful, become procedural information exchanges without actually coming up with new ideas, which is, of course, the important bit. So we need a mixture."
Newey says that time constraints caused by the challenge of the F1 rules overhaul for 2026 are actually forcing him to spend more time alone than he would like.
"We're under intense pressure for deadlines to get the major architectural parts of the car, which is the gearbox, followed by the chassis, the front suspension, the rear suspension, etc, released in time for testing in January," he said.
"In truth, [I'm] probably spending a bit more time than I would like, about 50% of my time, at the drawing board or looking at the CFD [computational fluid dynamics], the vehicle dynamic programmes, etc, trying to make sure that we're coming up with a concept that we're all happy with.
"I never want it to not be with everybody's involvement and buy-in."
While Aston Martin signed him to help it push towards the front of the grid, Newey thinks that the chances of delivering that are reliant on how well the whole organisation - which has undergone dramatic change in recent years - works together.
Asked for his thoughts on 2026, he said: "The honest answer is, I have absolutely no idea. We are in a period of transformation.
"We've, as a team, grown rapidly. It's really in a now settling down phase. Having grown hugely in numbers, we now need to settle everybody down, get them working well together.
"I've never been a believer in saying we will now achieve this or now achieve that.
"I think the satisfaction comes from working together to move forwards. If we can achieve that in 2026, that will be the first tick."
