Adrian Newey rejoint Aston Martin F1

As Motorsport.com announced last week, Adrian Newey will officially join Aston Martin as of March 1, 2025 and will even become a full shareholder. As part of this participation, the British engineer will occupy the newly created role of technical management partner within the team led by Lawrence Stroll. This announcement marks the end of several months of speculation about his future.

“I am delighted to join the Aston Martin team”Newey said in a statement released Tuesday. “I have been greatly inspired and impressed by the passion and commitment that Lawrence brings to everything he does. Lawrence is determined to build a world-class team. He is the only majority owner of a team who is actively involved in the sport.”

“His commitment is demonstrated by the development of the new AMR Technology Campus and wind tunnel at Silverstone, which are not only state-of-the-art, but whose layout creates an ideal environment in which to work. With great partners like Honda and Aramco, they have all the key elements of the infrastructure needed to make Aston Martin a world championship-winning team, and I am very much looking forward to helping make that happen.”

The 1^is Last May, Red Bull announced news that had been in the air for some time, namely the departure in early 2025 of Newey, who has participated in all of the team’s successes since his arrival in 2006, whether as head of the technical department or, more recently, as a consultant in his role as chief technical director. This information came at a time of tension for the Austrian team, in the spotlight due to the affair involving Christian Horner and an employee.

On a concrete level, and even before the choice fell on Aston, the engineer had therefore no longer been involved in the work of the team’s technical department since May. In addition, if Newey’s involvement in the technical part of Red Bull is even to be put into perspective in recent years, since he took a step back to make way for Pierre Waché who currently occupies the position of technical director, the departure of the 65-year-old engineer to another structure is of course an event in the small world of F1.

For Aston Martin, the signing of Newey is a huge coup in the transfer market. His arrival is part of a series of hires and investments overseen by Lawrence Stroll aimed at making the Silverstone-based team a force to be reckoned with in F1, with the promises of the start of 2023 largely gone and the green cars stuck in the soft underbelly of the standings for more than a year.

“This is huge news”Stroll said. “Adrian is the best in the world at what he does – he’s at the top of his game – and I’m incredibly proud that he’s joining Aston Martin. This is the biggest news since the Aston Martin name returned to the sport and a further demonstration of our ambition to build a Formula 1 team capable of challenging for World Championships. As soon as Adrian became available, we knew we had to make this happen. Our initial discussions confirmed that we shared a desire to work together on a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.”

“Adrian is passionate about racing and one of the most competitive people I have ever met. When he saw what we have built at Silverstone – our incredible AMR Technology Campus, the talented group of people we have assembled and the most advanced wind tunnel in the sport – he quickly understood what we are trying to achieve. We want to succeed, and so does he. Adrian shares our hunger and ambition, he believes in this project and will help us write the next chapter in Aston Martin’s Formula 1 story.”

Newey, soon to be 40 years old in F1

Newey is widely regarded as a legend in the technical field and is today, by far, the most famous and recognized engineer still practicing in the discipline. First briefly engaged with the Fittipaldi team in 1980, he joined March in 1981, notably to work in F2, endurance and CART, before returning to F1 in mid-1986 via the Haas Lola team. Finally, it was again with March that he definitively set foot in the premier discipline from 1988.

His early single-seaters, at March and then Leyton House, did not go unnoticed. He moved to Williams in 1991 as chief designer. His alliance with technical director Patrick Head would be at the origin of several emblematic single-seaters in Formula 1, including of course the FW14B of 1992 (driven by Nigel Mansell) and the FW15C of 1993 (driven by Alain Prost). In the mid-1990s, the tragedy of Ayrton Senna’s death and the failures of the 1994 and 1995 seasons would begin to crack the relationship between Williams and Newey, especially as the latter aspired to become technical director, a position from which Head was unshakeable.

After helping to design the FW18 (1996) and FW19 (1997), the last two Williams to win F1, Newey decided to join McLaren, where he would become technical director from 1997. His real contribution would not be felt until 1998, but at the wheel of the MP4/13, Mika Hakkinen would win his first title and McLaren its last constructors’ crown to date. The following year, Ferrari was too strong to be beaten in the constructors’ championship, but Hakkinen managed to retain his crown in the drivers’ championship.

The following years would see a desert crossing, in terms of titles, for Newey: with the beginning of the unchallenged domination of Ferrari and several disappointments at McLaren (the unreliability of the Mercedes engine and the fiasco of the MP4-18 in 2003, in particular), as well as the episode of the real-false start at Jaguar in 2001, tensions ended up appearing and the future of the British engineer was often a source of rumors. His image as a “winner” was tarnished a little and he then made the surprising choice to join the Red Bull team in the winter of 2005-2006.

Although he would have an influence from 2007 onwards, it was at the time of the regulatory revolution of 2009 that Red Bull took full advantage of Newey’s work. Starting from a little too far back to steal the world titles from Brawn GP, ​​the Austrian team would then sign four consecutive double drivers’ and constructors’ titles between 2010 and 2013, where the alliance between the chassis designed under the direction of the British driver, the engines manufactured by Renault and the driving of Sebastian Vettel worked wonders.

In 2014, it was another revolution, that of the arrival of turbo hybrid engines, which would knock Red Bull and Newey off their pedestal. In addition to the underperforming and unreliable engine, there was a chassis that was not without its faults, particularly due to correlation problems with the wind tunnel. If the Milton Keynes team occasionally plays for victory, it had to resign itself to witnessing the domination of Mercedes, which was simply challenged in 2017 and 2018 by Ferrari.

We will have to wait for the special circumstances of the 2021 season, namely the postponement of the new technical regulations to 2022 against the backdrop of the global health crisis and the relative freezing of chassis between 2020 and 2021, for Red Bull to truly replay the title (drivers only), which will fall into the hands of Max Verstappen at the end of a disputed and tense season against Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton, in troubled circumstances.

Subsequently, a new major regulatory overhaul, with the return of simplified F1 cars where ground effect plays an important role again, will offer Newey and his team the opportunity to make even more history by putting on the track, one after the other, two of the most dominant single-seaters in history, including the 2023 RB19, which broke many records in the hands of Verstappen. As for the RB20, the last single-seater on which Newey will have worked at Red Bull, it initially proved dominant at the start of the 2024 season, before being caught up from May.