Race week has started off with a bang, as the highly anticipated announcement was made that Red Bull's Chief Technical Officer Adrain Newey will join Aston Martin starting in 2025.
Authors Note: The Formula One Season has two main championship competitions. The first is the Drivers' Championship, which is a competition between the individual drivers. The drivers who finish in the top-10 each weekend will score points (the higher you place, the more points you get). These points are added up, and whichever driver finishes with the most points at the end of the season will win the Drivers' Championship. The next is the Constructors' Championship is a competition between the teams as a whole. The number of points the drivers within a team get each race is combined, creating the total points for the team (E.g., Lando Norris has scored 241 points, and Oscar Piastri has scored 197 points, giving the McLaren team 438 points in the Constructors' Championship). The team whose drivers accumulate the most points combined for their team will win the Constructors' Championship.
If you aren't familiar with Adrian Newey, he is regarded as the greatest car developer and general mind in F1 history. As a Chief Technical Director, Newey is responsible for ensuring the car's design is safe, legal within the sport's regulations, and as fast as possible. Throughout his career, Newey has consistently provided his team with a competitive car at the highest levels, with a track record unlike most engineers within the sport.
Newey started his F1 career in 1988 as a car designer for a team called March. After a couple of years of exceeding expectations as a Chief Designer with March and Technical Director for Leyton House Racing, he found his first major success when he joined Williams in 1991. Newey spent six years at Williams, during which they won the Constructors' Championship for five consecutive years, from 1992 to 1997. He then transitioned and joined McLaren in 1997, spending eight years with the team and winning one Constructors' Championship.
However, Newey's most notable accomplishments came when he joined Red Bull in 2006. He is known to be one of the biggest, if not the biggest, behind-the-scenes contributors to Red Bull's success over the years. Since his arrival, Red Bull has won six Constructors' Championships, with the last three coming in dominating fashion.
Newey's brilliance, adaptability and legacy (contributing to thirteen Constructors' Championship wins and twelve Drivers' Championship wins) have made him a massive topic of conversation. Red Bull announced in May that their Chief Technical Officer would be taking a step back from the team in 2024, stating that Newey would assist in developing their car for 2025 but leave the team at the end of the season. Though the exact reason for Newey's sudden departure can only be speculated, what mattered was that, after much consideration from him, he intended to remain in F1, just not with Red Bull.
After months of rumors about where Newey would end up, he finally found a home with Aston Martin next season. As to why he chose Aston Martin instead of a team like Ferrari (the other team reported to have had a significant interest), Newey expressed in an interview today his desire to help the Aston Martin team accomplish their goals and eagerness to work with Aston Martin's two drivers, Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll. It is also easy to sign a contract when the team's car development factory is in his home country of the UK, while also getting paid the salary Aston Martin will give him (roughly thirty-nine million dollars a year in American dollars).
Aston Martin will most likely start reaping the rewards that come with what Newey brings to the table once the new car regulations hit in 2026. Newey is still under contract with Red Bull for the rest of this season (as well as helping with their car development for next year), preventing Newey from working on any design for Aston Martin's car for the 2025 season until it officially begins in March. Thus, fans should expect Newey's first real project with the team to be the car's design for the 2026 season. With that being said, one thing is for sure: if Aston Martin wants to finally start achieving what they set out to achieve (forming a team that competes for wins and ultimately championships), getting the greatest mind in F1 history is the perfect way to start.
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Catch you next time!
-Matt Hylen
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