Last Updated on January 3 2025, 12:04 pm

Adrian Newey ends his eighteen year relationship with Red Bull Racing come March this year and will complete a move to Lawrence Stroll’s Aston Martin team as the managing technical partner for the organisation. The F1 car design guru proved to be a restless individual in his early career, bouncing between Indycar and F1 design work.

Despite joining the Leyton House/March team in 1988, Newey’s first real opportunity to prove his worth was following his move to Williams in 1991. The Grove based British racing team had been enjoying unprecedented success in the late 1980’s and with one of the best drivers and budgets in the field Newey and technical director Patrick Head quickly became a dominant F1 design partnership in the early 1990’s.

1994 was to be a defining year for Newey who found his challenger for that season unable to complete with the Rory Burns designed Benetton. The came Imola and the death of Ayrton Senna, which threatened possible manslaughter charges against the man who designed a potentially ‘faulty’ race car. 

 

 

 

Cracks appear in Newey/Williams relationship

Add into the mix that Newey was now ready for his first role as technical director but found his way blocked by Williams shareholder Patrick Head and cracks began to appear in the relationship between Adrian and the team.

Losing both 1995 titles to Benetton saw further distance established between Newey and Williams such that by the time Damon Hill had won the 1996 drivers’ championship with Jaques Villeneuve ensuring Williams claimed the constructors’ the same year, Newey was already on garden leave ahead of his move to McLaren. 

His time at Williams saw Newey responsible for 59 Grand Prix victories, 78 pole positions and 60 fastest laps, all from 114 race weekends between 1991-1997

His career at Williams ended with his cars winning 59 race victories, 78 pole positions and 60 fastest laps all from 114 races from 1991 till 1997. These seven years saw four drivers clinch world championship titles along with five constructors’ championship for the team.

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Numerous rumours of Newey leaving McLaren

With the 1997 McLaren car complete, Newey’s first job was to look to 1998 where his design would carry Mika Hakkinen to the world championship. Another title the following season and a close miss again at the turn of the millennium saw newly once again on top of the F1 car design pile.

Yet he was uneasy at McLaren and agreed a deal to move to Jaguar in 2001 with former CART colleague Bobby Rahal, before Ron Dennis persuaded Adrian to remain in Woking. Newey and McLaren were to suffer an extended period of Ferrari and Michael Schumacher dominance and throughout these years rumours persisted that newly was breaking up with Dennis.

Several sticking plaster type short term arrangements kept Newey in Woking until Red bull finally announced in the Guardian that the guru F1 car designer would be joining them in 2006. His reported pay was to be $10m a year, something Dennis and McLaren refused to match.

Come 2010 and Newey was designing his fourth full car in Milton Keynes, having missed out narrowly the season before in hunting down Brawn GP to win both championships. Red Bull were about to enter their first golden era in the sport, as across four successive seasons the Newey crafted racing prototypes proved to be the class of the field in the hands of Sebastian Vettel.

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Adrian gets bored of F1

Then came the biggest F1 rule change in history, as the sport agreed on a new V6 turbo hybrid power unit fomrula. It quickly became apparent that Renault who powered the Red Bull team to four consecutive driver and team championships, were not at the races with their new hybrid F1 power unit.

Newey began to lose interest in F1 given regardless of how good his car designs were, the might of the Mercedes powertrain would trump the put put Renault regardless.

Yet on June 8th 2014, Red Bull Racing announced that Newey had extended his contract for several more seasons but in an expanded role including “new Red Bull technology projects” but most importantly Horner and Red Bull had fought off a $25m a year bid for Newey from Ferrari.

The close call with Ferrari made Christian Horner realise his F1 team was too reliant on Adrian Newey and further given that the F1 guru designer had a restless streak in his nature, he could leave the team at almost anytime. America’s cup projects and the Aston Martin Valkyrie were all external opportunities designed to keep Newey fresh and engaged and then course came Red bull’s own super car, the RB17.

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Wache takes on Technical Director role

Pierre Wache took over Newey’s role as head of technical in 2018 and he built and as AMuS Michael Schmidt writes, “Adrian got a very good offer from Ferrari in 2014 and as a consequence, Christian Horner said Red Bull was forced to put ourselves in more than just Adrian Newey,” said Schmidt.

“So that’s where they built up this engineering department that they have now with Pierre Wache, Paul Monaghan, Ben Waterhouse. So I think, step-by-step Newey was doing less but he had the experience and the overall picture more than everyone else.”

Newey in his auto-biography claims he was close to joining Ferrari on three occasions, but in 2014 the culture in Maranello was toxic as the blame games persisted from year to year.

The beginning off the end for the Newey/Red Bull eighteen year success story came during the team’s record breaking all dominant season in 2023. Christian Horner was repeatedly badgered about the significance of Adrian Newey’s impact on the all conquering RB19 resulting in the Red Bull boss suggesting his design guru had less influence on the 2023 car than most people would realise.

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Horner refuses to exclusively credit Newey

“Adrian was injured for a large part of the summer [of 2022], or the latter part of the summer,” Horner explained. The intent behind this remark is clearly that the conception of the RB19 was during a period of absence for Newey. “I think the team just really stepped up and did a super impressive job across the board on this car. It’s wrong to pull out any single individual. It’s a collective effort that, as a team, galvanised.”

Yet Newey’s wife Amanda was unhappy with the suggestion that her husband was less than anything but the senior architect of Formula One’s most successful car ever. She took to social media following the publication of the Horner interviews stating, “what a load of hogwash” on X twice and posting “absolute bollocks” when a contributor dared to suggest Newey had a minimal impact on the RB19.

Adrian has been working part time for a number of years now, but has committed his full time attention to Aston Martin when he arrives in March this year. His desk will quickly become busy with etchings for the all new 2026 car possibilities as he attempts to become the only designer ever to win titles with four different F1 teams.

Horner and Red Bull knew all good things must come to an end sometime, and their ability to entertain Newey since his offer in 2014 from Ferrari, was nothing short of creative, whilst at the same time ensuring a seamless transition was in place for the day when the inevitable would come to pass.

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Ex-F1 champ claims countryman “burned F1 bridges” missing out on a Ferrari drive

Nico Hulkenberg is an all time Formula One record holder. The German born driver has now completed 227 Grand Prix starts in his career which began in 2010 which is the most ever by a driver without claiming a single podium finish.

His international career began with much promise as he won back to back GP3 and GP2 titles in 2008-9. He was recruited by Williams for the 2010 season to drive alongside the experienced Rubens Barichello who had been released by Mercedes following their acquisition of Brawn GP.

By round three in Malaysia, Nico looked upped to seed as he made it into the final session of qualifying outperforming his Brazilian team mate for the first time. With the new F1 scoring system introduced that year which saw points now awarded all the way down rot P10, Nico took the final points paying position at the end of the Grand Prix… READ MORE