Adrian Newey explains his decision on joining ‘old-school’ Aston Martin instead of Ferrari.
News broke in February that Lewis Hamilton would take the next step in his career and join the Prancing Horses in 2025.
Following the news, Red Bull confirmed that after working with each other for 19 years, Adrian Newey would depart the team in the first quarter of 2025.
The 65-year-old’s future was a huge topic of conversation for the next couple of months, with Newey being linked to a majority of teams on the grid. One which stood out on everyone’s radar was Ferrari.
Hamilton expressed his admiration for Newey, stating it would be a ‘privilege’ to get to work with him.
The Briton responded to the comments on the Beyond The Grid podcast where he said it ‘would have been fabulous’ to work with Hamilton.
However, as the months went on, rumours of Newey moving to Ferrari began dying down, with a new rumour emerging, that he would be joining Aston Martin for 2025. Those rumours became true on September 10th with a special televised press conference of the announcement of Newey joining the Silverstone-based team as Managing Technical Partner.
Newey gives his thoughts
During the press conference Newey was asked about other team prospects and how that ultimately led him to Aston Martin:
“I think from my part, I was very flattered by the number of teams that did approach me,”
“I had discussions with some of those teams, not all of them. In the end, it became a very clear and natural choice, for all the reasons I stated earlier in the conference.”
“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. I felt that I’ve been lucky enough to have achieved what I aspired to from the age of 10 or 12, which was simply to be a designer – I didn’t even know the word engineer – in motor racing.” Newey added.
“I can honestly say, everything else has been a bonus, having sort of achieved that straight out of uni. I never, of course, expected anything like what I’ve been lucky enough to be involved with. But you have to be honest with yourself and keep yourself fresh, so I felt I needed a new challenge.”
‘It became a natural choice.’
“Lawrence [Stroll] and I have known each other off and on over the years, we often bump into each other in the gym, particularly at the Middle East and Far East races.
“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.”
Newey went on to explain how Aston Martin’s working structure resembles ‘old-school’ F1 which ultimately helped him make his choice on joining the team:
“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. It’s [an opportunity] I’m very much looking forward to. It became a very natural choice.”
Featured image credits: Aston Martin