The question marks are now gone and Adrian Newey has a new home. Newey has officially joined Aston Martin F1 Team in a move that has taken months to close. Originally Newey was linked with a move to Ferrari but it became clear that this deal wouldn’t move forward after Newey met with the team and no contracts were signed earlier this year. Newey has been credited with the dominant success of Max Verstappen and Red Bull over the past three years. Aston Martin is hoping he will bring some of that success to the team.
In a press release from F1.com Newey spoke about the move and his goals for the future with the team. I felt as if I needed a new challenge. Towards the end of April, I decided that I needed to do something different.
“I spent a lot of time with Mandy, my wife, kind of discussing what’s next… What do we do? Do we go off and sail around the world? Do I do something different? We took a bit of time out. As I’ve announced to everybody that I will be departing the old team, I was very flattered to have a lot of approaches from various teams, but really Lawrence’s passion, commitment and enthusiasm was very endearing, it’s very persuasive.
The reality is, if you go back 20 years, what we now call Team Principals were actually the owners of the teams, Frank Williams, Ron Dennis, Eddie Jordan etcetera. In this modern era, Lawrence is actually unique in being the only properly active team owner.
“It’s a different feeling when you have somebody like Lawrence involved like that, it’s back to the old-school model, and to have the chance to be a shareholder and a partner is something that has never really been, or hasn’t been offered to me before.”
Newey will start at his new post in March 2025.