Adrian Newey is the most successful engineer in Formula 1. He has won Constructors’ Championships with three different teams: Williams, McLaren, and Red Bull. Born in Stratford, Great Britain, on December 26, 1958, he entered F1 after graduating in aeronautical engineering and taking his first steps in IndyCar.
He worked for Leyton-House (1988-1989), Williams (1990-1996), McLaren (1997-2005), and Red Bull, with which he achieved his latest successes: 6 Constructors’ titles and 7 Drivers’ titles. On two occasions, as Adrian Newey recounts in his autobiography “How to Build a Car,” he had the opportunity to move to Maranello to work for Scuderia Ferrari. On both occasions, however, he said no!
We have discussed the reasons that led the paddock’s “aerodynamics genius” to reject the proposal from the leaders of the Scuderia in more than one instance.
“They had already tried to win me over, but this time they were serious.” These are the words Newey uses in his biography when Chapter 77 talks about Ferrari’s “call.” We are in the spring of 2014, at the beginning of the turbo-hybrid era that Mercedes would later dominate.
“I went to visit Luca Montezemolo, then President of Ferrari, at his country house near Tuscany – it reads in the book. – We talked seriously, and their offer was crazy. Luca wanted to entrust me with the entire Ferrari, both road and racing. They promised almost a celebrity lifestyle and an absurdly high economic offer, much more than double the already generous salary I received at Red Bull.”
So why did Adrian Newey never come to Maranello? The not-so-easy decision kept the English engineer awake for many nights, who had also received another offer from Niki Lauda on behalf of Mercedes. Newey evaluated various aspects, including family, cultural, work mode, and chances of success or failure.
“Red Bull was my home,” Adrian Newey clarified, still in his book. “Of course, there were family issues to consider: the children doing different things and my relationship with Mandy. I had to evaluate all of this when the time came to make a decision. But as far as work was concerned, my constant thought was simply: I didn’t want to leave Red Bull.”
So, two reasons underlie the choice not to go to Ferrari: on the one hand, family reasons, and on the other, the desire to stay in a team that had made him feel fulfilled in a sport he had adored since childhood, a sport he loved not always for what it was but for what it could be – the perfect harmony between man and machine, the perfect combination of style, efficiency, and speed.
Recently, other details related to Newey’s “No” to Ferrari in 2014 have emerged. Christian Horner, Team Principal of Red Bull Racing, reveals it in a recent podcast by Dax Shepar, “Eff Won with DRS,” which we report in full below.
Christian Horner recounts how Adrian Newey was very close to leaving Red Bull. The Team Principal of the Austrian team reveals that the signature was really missing when he and Helmut Marko managed to convince him to stay, adding the possibility of designing a road supercar, “matching” something that Ferrari had also guaranteed to the English engineer.
At the moment when Horner made this “promise,” the Team Principal of Red Bull revealed that he also told Adrian Newey that at that moment he didn’t know how, but he would do it. Horner managed to keep the promise made to his designer in 2014, and within a few years, the collaboration with Aston Martin came to life, which, among other things, gave rise to the Aston Martin Valkyrie project.
Still in the podcast, Christian Horner then added that he went to then Aston Martin CEO Andy Palmer and told him, “We have the best designer of all time and two great brands. Does it make sense to bring these two things together? And this literally happened in a pub in England.”
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