AUTONEWS

Aston Martin beats Ferrari, McLaren and Alpine with millions

Aston Martin beat rivals Ferrari, McLaren and Alpine in its most recent race. It wasn't towards the finish line, but towards the signing of Adrian Newey, the most coveted engineer in F1... Aston Martin produces fabulous road cars, both powerful and luxurious, in both coupé and SUV formats, but that's not what was in the news this week. The news came at the level of the manufacturer's representation in F1, which is a mid-table team and urgently wants to move up to the front row of the starting grid. After raising the necessary funds to be able to fight for victory and a renowned driver, such as Fernando Alonso, the Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team, as the official name of the manufacturer's F1 team, needed a top engineer to design the team's next formula. And it managed to sign Adrian Newey, a 65-year-old Briton with 44 years of career. Newey is the most revered technician — because he is the most successful — in the top discipline of motor racing. His cars have won 25 World Championships and 200 race victories, and while for the last 18 years he has been the chief technical officer of Red Bull, a team that catapulted from a mid-table team to the team with the most successes in the last almost two decades, Adrian Newey has decided to announce his departure from the Austrian team in May 2024. It is now known that he has signed for Aston Martin.

Ferrari, McLaren, Alpine and Williams were also in the running to sign Newey, but the English technician preferred Aston Martin, also a mid-table team, as was the case with Red Bull in 2006, when Adrian Newey began designing his formulas. In addition to the challenge, which the prestigious technician seems to like so much, the fact that Aston Martin offered him the second position in the team (as managing technical partner), reporting only to Lawrence Stroll, the administrator of the manufacturer and the team, must have played an important factor. At the same time, the British brand offered him shares in the company and... a salary of 30 million pounds per year.

Starting over and with Honda instead of Mercedes...In addition to the monetary aspect and not having to report to a team director like the controversial Christian Horner, who ran Red Bull, Newey has everything that motivates him ahead of him. In addition to trying to improve the 2025 car, he will above all start working on the 2026 car, which will be governed by new technical regulations, which puts all teams on an equal footing and at ground zero in development. At the same time, the engine regulations will also be changed, which will represent an additional challenge for Aston Martin, as its team will no longer work with Mercedes and will instead start working with Honda, which has been developing the new power unit for a few months. It is worth remembering that Newey and Honda have already worked together at Red Bull since 2021, which speeds up the optimisation of the collaboration for 2026.

Red Bull and Horner in particular were not happy about Adrian Newey's move to Aston Martin, who could not resist criticising the announcement of his current chief engineer's contract, despite the fact that he had already announced in May that he would be leaving Red Bull at the end of the season, which ends on 8 December in Abu Dhabi. Red Bull even went so far as to say that Newey would stop working on the F1 cars, including the one that is allowing Red Bull to lead the 2024 championship with Max Verstappen, so it is not surprising that Newey, no longer associated with the F1 team where he has worked for 18 years, felt comfortable announcing his new job.

In part, it is understandable why Red Bull is so “heartburn” regarding the departure of its technician, who designed the current car and was unceremoniously dismissed in May, as soon as he revealed that he no longer wanted to put up with Horner and his way of running the team. The work that Newey left behind allowed the team to continue winning after the engineer's departure in May, but the reality is that, after just one month, Red Bull stopped winning and, until September, there were no major improvements...

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