Formula 1 design engineering guru tells Cropley and Prior why he has left the sport’s leading team
Aston Martin has appointed Adrian Newey, Formula 1’s most successful design engineer, to be its managing technical partner. He will start at the Silverstone team on 2 March 2025.
Newey’s cars have taken more than 200 grand prix wins, 13 drivers’ championships and 12 constructors’ championships across three F1 teams.
Of those, more than 100 wins, seven drivers’ and six’ constructors titles have come since he joined Red Bull Racing in 2005, where many onlookers – including himself – expected him see out his career.
But speaking exclusively to Autocar’s My Week In Cars Podcast, Newey, 65, said that there were “multiple reasons to take the difficult decision to stop at Red Bull”, where he has been on semi-gardening leave since negotiating an end to his F1 involvement last May.
“If you’d asked me a few years ago, I’d have said ‘no, I’ll be at Red Bull for the rest of my working career’,” Newey said, “but for various reasons, I just started to feel as if I was losing my mojo a little bit on the Formula 1 side.”
Since announcing his step back from Red Bull’s F1 operation, Newey has instead spent his time engineering the RB17 hypercar for sibling company Red Bull Advanced Technologies, as well as fielding various overtures to return to the F1 fold.
Aston Martin’s part-owner and executive chairman, Lawrence Stroll, who today described his new hire as “the best in the world at what he does”, won out, with Newey crediting Stroll as being a key part in luring him to Silverstone.
As well as a salary rumoured in some outlets to be astronomical, Newey will also take a shareholding in the team, which is “something I’ve not had before, and I’m looking forward to how that changes my outlook”, he said.
Describing Red Bull as “a mature team” and Aston Martin – which finished fifth in last year’s constructors’ championship – as having “a little bit to go”, Newey told Autocar that “the challenges are clear” but that “Lawrence’s passion and commitment is exemplary”.
“In many ways, he reminds me of Dietrich Mateschitz, our late Red Bull owner, in his commitment to the success of the team,” Newey continued. “Lawrence is just so enthusiastic about everything and trying to get it to work, and I’m excited by working with him.”
While Newey will be tasked to an extent with improving Aston’s 2025 performance, his primary remit will be to develop the 2026 car, arriving as he will a few months after the publication of new and highly changed chassis regulations for the 2026 season.
What it won’t extend to is working with Aston’s road car division (F1 is “very much full-time sole focus for the foreseeable future”), even though Newey has a keen interest in road cars.
With Red Bull Advanced Technologies, he previously worked with the firm to create the Aston Martin Valkyrie hypercar, a project he “thoroughly enjoyed” even though “it didn’t turn out the way we liked… which is in no way a criticism of Aston Martin at all.”
For more of Newey’s views on F1, road cars and much more besides, listen and subscribe to the Autocar podcast below.
