why is the departure of Adrian Newey a thunderbolt for Red Bull and the entire discipline?

The legendary British engineer will leave Red Bull after the first quarter of 2025, the end of an open secret which could have serious consequences on the face of F1.

He is neither Max Verstappen, brilliant and ruthless driver on the track. Nor even Christian Horner, face of what happens off the track at Red Bull. Adrian Newey is a star for those in the know, a man in the shadows for many. The engineer, at the origin of Red Bull single-seaters in F1 for almost twenty years, will leave the dominant team on the grid, as she confirmed on Wednesday 1^er May after weeks of rumors. After Lewis Hamilton moving from Mercedes to Ferrari next season, it’s a new earthquake that could shake an entire sport.

At 65, Newey will be free at the end of the first quarter of 2025, the end of two decades of supremacy with Red Bull. And the possible continuation of a career of technical domination and trophies. Since 1988 and his first role as technical director within the modest March team, Adrian Newey is the “progenitor” of more than a third of the titles – drivers and constructors combined – awarded in Formula 1 (25/72) and gleaned from single-seaters born from his stroke of pencil. Everywhere during his career, the presence of Adrian Newey has been synonymous with victories, from Alain Prost’s last world champion title with Williams in 1993, to the return to favor of McLaren at the end of the 90s until the Red Bull adventure that he joined just one year after his arrival in the paddock, in 2006.

“A true magician”

A true old-fashioned engineer, Adrian Newey was able to impose his ideas to create cars that were both fast and stable thanks to aerodynamics and the use of air flows. “Adrian Newey is a real magician when it comes to understanding the whole of a vehicle but starting from the essential factor in Formula 1, namely its aerodynamic functioningexplains our consultant Cyril Abiteboul, former director of the Renault team. He is from a disappearing generation of technical directors who have learned to operate without computers, without mega-teams with experts in everything down to the smallest micro-detail. The generation from which he comes has, by necessity, led him to have a rather analytical and global thinking as an engineer, rather than being an expert in a field, when some directors come more from mechanics, others from drawing.“

“This is a strength of Adrian Newey: he starts from the regulations, and immediately goes to his drawing board, questioning all the issues, aerodynamically, mechanically, suspension, engine… All essential features of the car will be for the sole purpose of optimizing aerodynamic operation, without any concessions.”

Cyril Abiteboul

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Within the Red Bull empire, a nouveau riche in the heart of the 2000s which quickly became a power with almost unlimited means, Adrian Newey had free rein to apply his “to the end”, as described by Cyril Abiteboul, who also worked with Renault, when the French firm supplied the engines to the Austrian team. “When Renault was Red Bull’s engine supplier, we developed blowing together, the return of air from the exhausts into the rear of the car to create downforce. He didn’t just see an engine as an engine but as a tool to generate aerodynamic downforce, to make the car accelerate but also go through corners faster.“

A fine sleuth to detect flaws or gray areas in a technical regulation to gain an unprecedented advantage, “his vision and genius helped win 13 titles in 20 seasons“, as Red Bull team principal Christian Horner recalled in the press release announcing the departure of Adrian Newey. “Red Bull didn’t always win because at one point Mercedes had such a dominant engine, and the regulations meant that the engine was the dominant factor. Apart from this exception, since 2009, Red Bull has been crushing the discipline in a certain way aerodynamically.“Until making Max Verstappen the three-time reigning Formula 1 world champion, winner of 19 of the 22 races last season and launched in 2024 on the same standards of hegemony with four successes in five Grands Prix.

Red Bull is struggling

This unrivaled sporting success, however, came up against upheavals behind the scenes at Red Bull. Adrian Newey gradually took a step back from F1 activities, diversifying his activity from 2018, to participate in other projects of the brand, while supervising the new single-seaters. “He came to be less committed even at Red Bull because the regulations bored himbelieves Cyril Abiteboul. What drives him is winning, and the technology that fascinates him.“The extra-sporting turmoil, from the death of Red Bull founder Dietrich Mateschitz in 2022 to the Christian Horner affair, accused of harassment at the start of the season before being cleared by an internal investigation, will have ended up making us want something else thing to one of the pillars of Red Bull’s success.

“Dietrich Maseschitz’s absolutely uncompromising commitment to winning was what made the whole thing hold together and the alchemy work.says our consultant. And that’s what made Adrian Newey stay. Red Bull’s strength lies in its triumvirate between Newey, Christian Horner and Helmut Marko, responsible for the detection channel for young drivers, who shaped Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen. The loss of Adrian Newey is that of a technical, charismatic leader, but also of one of the fundamental elements of this trio, who will find himself even more destabilized than he already is, after all the adventures of the beginning of the year.“

Completely excluded from the Formula 1 department until his departure in 2025, Adrian Newey now has the choice of a deserved retirement, at 65, or a final challenge. There is no shortage of contenders for his signature, at the dawn of a major change for Formula 1 with new technical regulations in 2026, and necessary developments which have made the legendary career of the engineer. “Rules developments are often the key, once the spark of a good base is there“, described the person concerned in 2017 in his autobiography. Enough to imagine a revolution in a discipline which is starting to go in circles, to which Newey had already largely contributed.