Adrian Newey’s affection for Red Bull’s “principles” was revealed in comments that resurfaced after the F1 design genius announced on Wednesday that he would be leaving the team.
After a week of hypothesizing about Newey’s future, Red Bull showed that the 65-year-old will leave the team at the beginning of 2025.
Newey has been a central figure in Red Bull’s good fortune since joining McLaren in 2006, designing winning cars for Sebastian Vettel and three-time world champion Max Verstappen.
News of Newey’s departure comes amid rumours that he has won contracts from Aston Martin and Ferrari, with Italian publication La Gazzetta dello Sport claiming that Ferrari could announce Newey’s arrival after this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix.
Newey has been linked with a stint at Ferrari during his illustrious career, being the closest to his arrival at the Scuderia in 2014, when the arrival of the V6 hybrid era in F1 marked the end of Red Bull’s initial era of dominance under Vettel.
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Jos Verstappen warns Red Bull ‘at risk of collapsing’ after Adrian Newey’s departure
In the end, the designer decided to stay, cutting his position at Red Bull, which allowed him to interact in activities outside of F1.
In a passage from How to Build a Car, his 2017 autobiography, Newey explained the reasons why he brought Ferrari down.
He wrote that the cutting-edge culture within Red Bull, adding that the team concentrates on offering opportunities to young drivers rather than recruiting established superstars, represented “the true spirit of motorsport”.
And he pointed to the 2012 season, when Vettel overtook Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso to win a third consecutive world title, despite a slow start to the year in which he won just one of the first thirteen races, as an example of Red Bull’s impossible-to-resist paint ethic.
He wrote: “We went from being a paddock prankster, an upstart, a strong and party-friendly drinks company, to four-time world champions.
“And we did it in an old-fashioned way, principles that for me were in line with the true spirit of motorsport.
“I went back to the start of the 2012 season when we weren’t getting the car to work well and I remembered with pride that our shoulders weren’t going down.
“We had our heads, we had solved the problem.
“I imagined how we had evolved into the young drivers of buying star names; how we had helped put Milton Keynes on the map.
“How, in spite of all this, we never stopped working; how we had taken the road less traveled, even if it meant facing probably insurmountable technical problems or challenges.
“How we never choose the undeniable option in search of an undeniable life nor do we sit on our laurels, content with ourselves and ‘this will do’.
“We’ve continued to innovate. “
News of his departure from Red Bull came here despite Newey stating in December 2023 that leaving the team at this level of his career would be like “leaving his family”.
Appearing on the Formula For Success podcast alongside former Red Bull driver David Coulthard and team owner Eddie Jordan, who, as Newey’s manager, played a key role in negotiating his exit, Newey revealed he had “almost joined” Ferrari three times. total.
He said: “Ferrari is this magical logo which, in all honesty, probably everyone in motorsport is fascinated and tempted to sign on to if given the chance.
“I’ve been approached, and I’ve been close, 3 times. One of them in IndyCars a long time ago.
“It’s an amazing brand. There’s all this mystique in it. In fact, it’s the Italian national team, with all the things that go along with it.
“The problem is that if you don’t do a wonderful job, you’re bound to be reprimanded and torn apart. Of course, if you do a smart job, then you’re a national hero. So that brings all its own pressures. “
“But I have to try to take away the hobby aspect and approach it from an engineering perspective.
“I’ve enjoyed the groups I’ve worked for and, of course, Red Bull because it’s a team I’ve been a component of, more or less, from the beginning.
“It’s a team where I’ve played a pivotal role in developing the engineering side of the team, so it’s a team I’m comfortable with. We all know how we work.
“I guess I have to replace now; I’m not saying I’ll never replace it because you never say that; However, it would be like abandoning your family, because that’s what they’ve become. “
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