The worst kept secret of the past two weeks was finally made official when Adrian Newey was announced by Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team. One of the most prolific designers in the sport’s history joining one of the most iconic automotive brands in history.
The reason for Newey to join Aston Martin was simple: the vision and ambition of owner Lawrence Stroll.
“Lawrence, that’s easy,” he answered when asked what brought him to Aston Martin. “No, seriously, I think I felt as if I needed a new challenge. And so kind of in towards the end of April, I decided I needed to do something different.
“Spent a lot of time with Mandy, my wife, kind of discussing, OK, what’s next? What do we do? Do I kind of go off and sail or do we go off and sail around the world?
“Do I do something different to America’s Cup or whatever? So we took a bit of time out. And I felt 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 don’t think you knew the word engineer, in motor racing.
“And 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.”
Newey revealed that talks between him and Stroll started in the gym where they met frequently during the seasons, talks which of course intensified after he announced his departure from Red Bull Racing last April.
“Lawrence 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. So as I’ve kind of said, announced to everybody that I would be departing the old team, then I was flattered to, very flattered to have a lot of approaches from various teams.
“But really, Lawrence’s passion and commitment and enthusiasm is very endearing, it’s very persuasive. The reality is, if you go back 20 years, then what we now call team principals are actually the owners of the teams.
“Frank Williams, Ron Dennis, Eddie Jordan, et cetera, et cetera. In this modern era, then Lawrence is actually unique in being the only properly active team owner. And I think that does bring, 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. So it’s a slightly different slant. It’s one I’m very much looking forward to. It became a very natural choice.”
In addition to the vision, ambition and, of course, funding by Stroll there is also the prospect of working in the brand new factory Aston Martin is finishing up in Silverstone. A state of the art facility with new wind tunnel and, important to Newey, a good creative atmosphere.
“I think what Lawrence and Martin [Whitmarsh] have built here, these facilities are just stunning. It’s not an easy thing to do to build a brand new factory in a greenfield site and have it have a really nice, warm, creative feel to it, because after all, that’s what we’re here for, to try to be creative and to come up with good solutions, particularly with good communication between everybody that works here. And I’ve seen some new buildings that haven’t quite fulfilled that.
“But this one has a great feel, the proportions are right, the proportions are right, it has all the facilities. So yes, you’re absolutely right. I’m so looking forward to starting, to getting to know everybody here, to work with them and go from there.
“I think that [it] was perhaps the combination of seeing all the facilities, how nice a feel and how well thought out the building is, and perhaps most of all, that very visual demonstration of Lawrence, actually.
“If I had to describe Lawrence in one sentence, I think one of the things that I always kind of think of is he has total belief, he has a direction, and he’s happy to put all his chips on black, and that’s what he’s doing here.”
One of the teams angling for Newey’s services was Ferrari, that other famous car brand, but Fred Vasseur decided to back out of a bidding war with Stroll, meaning the most wanted designer in F1 will now be donning British Racing Green, a colour he is well familiar with.
“I think arguably next to Ferrari, then Aston Martin is the most iconic brand across the world,” Newey said. “It’s got such a presence and a feel to it. So of course that’s special. It also ties actually in quite well.
“Obviously I was involved with the Valkyrie project and I have a couple of classic Astons as well. So I’m well familiar with the brand and the magic that goes with that.”
