Adrian Newey leaving Red Bull after 18 years and eight consecutive Drivers’ and Constructors’ titles was one of the biggest stories of the 2024 season.
The legendary car designer left at the start of the year in the aftermath of the controversy surrounding team principal Christian Horner, and will instead make the switch to Aston Martin in March this year.
Newey’s CV speaks for itself in F1 and billionaire team owner Lawrence Stroll is investing heavily in in Aston Martin’s team infrastructure and backroom staff to get the team into a position to take advantage of the 2026 ruleset.
His exit from Red Bull has made a massive impact on Red Bull, as it coincided with an 11-race win drought for Max Verstappen between the Spanish and Qatar Grands Prix.
Even though the initial months were difficult for the team, they eventually made a breakthrough with the RB20. This is down to a decision made by Horner after Newey received a multi-million-pound offer from Ferrari in 2014 according to journalist Michael Schmidt speaking on the Pelas Pistas podcast.
Adrian Newey’s Ferrari offer forced Red Bull to build up engineering talent
Red Bull faced a difficult task in the early stages of making fixes to the RB20, with Newey’s influence extending beyond the aerodynamics. Newey often helped the team with car setup during race weekends and strategy, having started off in F1 as a race engineer at Leyton House.
Horner knew how much of a risk this was in putting all his eggs into one basket, so after Newey received an offer to join Ferrari in 2014 he made significant changes to the engineering structures.
“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 has the experience and the overall picture more than everyone else.”
Adrian Newey came close to working with Fernando Alonso prior to Aston Martin move
Newey had come close to joining Ferrari three times in his storied career, and the move in 2014 was one of the closest of his career yet.
Explaining in his autobiography ‘How To Build A Car’ Newey explained that the blame culture at Ferrari during this period ultimately persuaded him to stay put.
The story of Newey entertaining a move to Ferrari would re-emerge after his Red Bull exit last year, with stories linking him to a sensational move with Lewis Hamilton.
Newey is said to have made contact with Ferrari but his salary demands were too high for team principal Frederic Vasseur.
