Max Verstappen is rightly getting all the praise for his dominant driving, a fourth global name that already feels like a formality just five races into this new Formula 1 season.
And for those watching from the outside, former F1 key figure Lewis Hamilton.
But bigger than either in the annals of the game is 65-year-old Adrian Newey, the ultimate trump card in F1’s card space.
Hamilton’s move from Mercedes to Ferrari was seismic when he announced it just weeks before the start of this season.
However, Red Bull’s news that Newey will leave the team after just two decades may not have the same luster, but it has far more far-reaching consequences.
There were repeated network-wide approaches for much of Newey’s tenure in Milton Keynes. But with more than two hundred Grand Prix wins and thirteen drivers’ titles, not to mention the creation of some of the greatest race cars of all time, he told me that Red Bull had been a favorite era of his career. That’s why, when his rivals brandished blank cheques around him for his £15m-a-year salary, he signed for a further year until the end of 2025.
But he temporarily went from rumoring his departure to delivering an official resignation letter and finally to his lawyers defining the terms of his departure in the spring of 2025.
Even before that, Aston Martin had already submitted an offer for him to join them, while Ferrari made it known that Newey could prove his worth to enter Hamilton there next season.
So why leave the team that dominates F1?Speaking to him a few seasons ago, he told me: “When I joined Red Bull, other people thought I was committing suicide. It’s been the most satisfying [period] because with Christian [Horner] we’ve pulled him out of the ashes of Jaguar. “as we want. “
At first, he and Horner had lunch every day at the team’s headquarters. They fly together for races, sometimes they’re glued to each other’s hips. Their offices are divided by two giant glass panels, separated by a few steps.
The crux of the matter is not so much that Newey is at an impasse when it comes to Red Bull projects. Part of the appeal that kept him going with a new contract last year to allow him to paint the company’s hypercar, the prototype of which is due to launch later this year. The plan is to retire next spring when the project, in theory, is complete.
But one guy who has avoided public confrontation is concerned about the infighting that has infiltrated Red Bull between the Austrian and Thai owners at the helm of the company, but also the disputes between Horner, motorsport representative Helmut Marko and Jos Verstappen. , Max’s dad.
Prior to all this, Newey had said in an interview that leaving would be “like leaving his family,” but it’s evident that relations have deteriorated beyond what he’s willing to handle. In addition, there is the possibility, before the final regulation in 2026, to work on any novelty in what will finally be his last work.
Ferrari and Hamilton’s allure might be scratching at his last itch, and his wife Amanda is reported to be at home in Italy. Red Bull planned to fight tooth and nail in the long run and had the option of forcing him to take a draconian landscaping licence denying him his involvement in the progression of a 2026 project. But that didn’t happen, Newey is free to interpret the new regulations as he sees fit.
Having shown that his term in Milton Keynes has expired, the effect of his departure will be seismic. Red Bull has sought to downplay its influence in recent months, insisting that the team is the sum of the pieces of the engineering team that has been built around it, which has irritated him.
And yet, they know full well that it’s their aerodynamic experience that puts Red Bull head and shoulders above the rest of the grid.
The domino effect can have other repercussions as well. Rumours about Verstappen’s long career probably wouldn’t go away, with Mercedes in a position to call on his services, and what would that mean for Horner?He probably would have survived the initial attack. However, without its two most important figures and, in Newey, its greatest ally, what’s next?
MORE ABOUT