General Grant once said War is progressive, when he was accused of not following the old rules faithfully enough. I will go a step further and say Everything is progressive. Everything is built on the past which was, of course, built on its past. Especially in sports which are – when you think about it – war with a better set of rules.

Part of  Everything is progressive. is that nobody stays on top for long. Think football. Every decade, there is a Team of the Decade, but then new coaches come along and build on what was the newest latest thing but no longer is. For example, the San Francisco 49ers' Bill Walsh. He was a genius and he changed professional football, but, after a while, his opponents began to understand what he was doing, then how to stop him and then incorporate what he was doing and then build on it.

Like football, Formula One Racing is a team sport, and like football, a team is strong for a while, then another team comes along and replaces it. Except for teams that have Adrian Newey. Newey is an racecar engineer specializing in aerodynamics.
When he worked on CART cars in the United States he took Al Unser and then, Bobby Rahal to championships in the 1980s. In the 90s, he worked for Williams in Formula One and took them to several championships. Then he moved to McLaren F1 and they won. Now he is at Red Bull as the technical director and they are the fastest car, by far, this year.