Adrian Newey lifts lid on Christian Horner agreement behind continued Red Bull involvement
How will Christian Horner and Red Bull fare without Adrian Newey in F1 2025 and beyond?
Adrian Newey has lifted the lid on his agreement with Christian Horner that will see him remain involved with Red Bull even after he officially leaves the company in 2025.
Red Bull announced in May that Newey will leave in early 2025, having masterminded the team’s astronomical success in F1 with the likes of Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen.
Adrian Newey details Christian Horner Red Bull RB17 agreement
Although Newey has already ceased his involvement with the Formula 1 operation, the 65-year-old has continued to attend F1 2024 races with Red Bull as well as working on the RB17 hypercar project, which was unveiled at last month’s Goodwood Festival of Speed.
Red Bull’s former title sponsors Aston Martin appear to have seen off the likes of Ferrari and McLaren in the race for Newey’s signature, with recent reports claiming a three-year contract worth $100million has been “finalised.”
An announcement on Newey’s future is expected next month, with the terms of his Red Bull exit – negotiated by his manager, the former F1 team owner Eddie Jordan – allowing him to start work with his new employers as soon as F1 2025, bypassing the period of gardening leave commonplace in the contracts of F1 staff.
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While Newey is officially parting company with Red Bull, he will continue to oversee the development and distribution of the RB17, 50 models of which are to be sold, beyond his departure.
Appearing on Red Bull’s in-house Talking Bull podcast, Newey opened up on the “really difficult decision” to leave the team.
And he opened up on the agreement between himself, Horner and other Red Bull senior figures that ensures he will still play a part in the RB17 even after his exit, with Newey too invested in the project to walk away.
He said: “It was a really difficult decision, a really difficult decision, but one I felt I needed to make for various reasons.
“The positive of it, though, is that first of all I felt I needed a bit of a break as well and that’s what we’re doing.
“But it also meant that I can fully concentrate on RB17 from now until next year, and then, indeed, after that point.
“After I officially stop with Red Bull, I’m very much in agreement with Christian, the shareholders and all the senior people at Red Bull that I will continue to be involved with RB17 on email, on phone calls, dyno tests when we start dyno testing, track testing when we start testing.
“I’ve put too much into this car now – as a passion project, much of it on after-hours evenings and weekends – to walk away from it at this point.”
Newey’s next move has been the subject of much speculation over recent months, with Aston Martin reportedly moving into pole position to secure his signature after Ferrari balked at his demands for control over the engineering department.
Asked about the intense media focus, Newey revealed that he hasn’t paid attention to the motor-racing press since he “messed up” the design of the 1989 Leyton House car and found himself going from “hero to idiot.”
He said: “That bit [is] very easy, because I don’t really read social media and I don’t particularly read magazines.
“That’s something I stopped doing a long time ago, because back in my Leyton House days, where we were a tiny little team, the first car I did was in 1988 and that was a good little car actually.
“And then in ’89 we completely messed it up, so I went from being this new hero in the Formula 1 paddock on the engineering side to the idiot that was a one-hit wonder.
“I thought that you can’t really read the press when it’s good and then get upset about it when it’s poor, so at that point I said: ‘OK, just don’t read the press.’
“Mandy, my wife, does follow social media so she keeps me roughly informed of what’s going on, but I’m relatively oblivious to it and I just try to live my life and not be influenced by it.”
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