(Paris) Red Bull’s historic engineer Adrian Newey, who has been at the heart of the team’s success in Formula 1 for almost 20 years, will join Aston Martin next year, with the ambition of securing victories for the English team.
After double world champion Fernando Alonso in 2023, Newey is expected in March 2025 in the ranks of Aston Martin, which is aiming for the world title in the medium term.
“Adrian is the best in the world in his field. He is the key, the main piece of the puzzle. He will be the technical leader of our project,” stressed Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll, owner of the team and father of Lance Stroll, Alonso’s teammate at Aston Martin on Tuesday.
PHOTO ANDREW BOYERS, ACTION IMAGES, PROVIDED BY REUTERS
Adrian Newey and Lawrence Stroll
Newey, who will leave Red Bull in early 2025, where he has worked since 2006, has committed to the “long term” and will become associate technical director, a newly created position, as well as a shareholder in the team based in Silverstone (England).
“I felt I needed a new challenge […] “The opportunity to be a shareholder and director had never been offered to me so it really became a natural choice,” said the 65-year-old Englishman on Tuesday during his presentation press conference.
Once tipped to join Ferrari after the announcement of his departure from Red Bull at the beginning of May, the engineer could earn up to 25 million pounds per year (around 45 million dollars) in the ranks of the English manufacturer, according to several media outlets.
Multi-champion
With 12 constructors’ world championships won with seven drivers as famous as Alain Prost, Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen, Adrian Newey has one of the richest records of any F1 engineer.
He is responsible for the McLaren that allowed the Finn Mika Häkkinen to be crowned in 1998 and 1999 and, before that, the Williams that brought a title each to Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost, Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve between 1992 and 1997.
It was with Red Bull, which he will leave next year, that Newey had his finest moments. Since 2010, he has helped the Austrian team win no fewer than six constructors’ titles and seven drivers’ titles: four with Vettel (2010-2013) and three with Verstappen (2021-2023).
He perfectly took the new regulatory turn imposed on teams in 2022, designing an unbeatable single-seater that allowed Red Bull to win 17 of the 22 GPs contested in 2022 then 21, still out of 22, the following year, atomizing the competition. The next evolution of the regulations is expected at the beginning of 2026.
Aston Martin’s ambitions
The reason for his departure from Red Bull – which has never been specified – could be linked to the controversy surrounding team boss Christian Horner, who was the target of accusations of “inappropriate behaviour” towards a female employee earlier this year, and the considerable turmoil it caused within the team, according to the BBC.
Horner, who has always denied the accusations, was cleared in late February following an internal investigation.
The specialist site Motorsport also returns to the hypothesis of a deterioration in relations between Newey and Horner. For his part, the English engineer had simply explained in a Red Bull press release that “the moment [était] come to pass the baton to others and seek new challenges for [lui]-even “.
With the arrival of Newey, Aston Martin hopes to once again be at the forefront after its flamboyant start to the 2023 season, during which Fernando Alonso had a string of podium finishes.
To achieve this, the team has continued to strengthen its personnel and infrastructure. Since its acquisition by Lawrence Stroll in 2021, its workforce at the Silverstone factory has more than doubled to 850 employees, and the team has also built several new buildings, one of which will house a state-of-the-art wind tunnel.
But for now, the British team is only fifth in the constructors’ championship, far behind Red Bull and McLaren, neck and neck at the top of the hierarchy. Until when?