The rumors suggested it, and now it’s official: Adrian Newey is moving to the Aston Martin Formula 1 team as the Managing Technical Partner. This comes months after he announced his departure from Red Bull amidst turmoil surrounding Christian Horner.
Ever since Newey made his decision to leave Red Bull, he’s been the hottest commodity in the paddock thanks to his ability to design championship-winning cars on a consistent basis. Newey’s been instrumental to Red Bull’s success for years now, and Max Verstappen’s total dominance over the sport throughout the past few years is continued evidence of Newey’s design genius.
Teams like Ferrari, Williams and more were rumored to have pursued Newey, but in the end, Aston Martin is the big winner. Newey’s pay hasn’t been formally announced, but it’s been reported by the BBC that his salary is somewhere in the realm of $39 million a year for five years. If true, that’d make Newey’s contract more lucrative than every driver outside of Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen.
Newey will join in time – March 2025 – to have an impact on the car for the 2026 season when new regulations hit the sport. Aston is partnering with Honda for the 2026 car’s powertrain, which should prove an easy transition for Newey considering he’s worked with Honda for years at Red Bull.
Aston says the company’s brand-new technical campus was a huge deciding factor for bringing Newey into the fold, and being able to work with a talent like Fernando Alonso as a driver sounds like a proper incentive, too. Of course, that also means Newey turned down the opportunity to work with drivers like Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc at Ferrari.