Adrian Newey slammed Red Bull’s ‘easy’ route for ‘feeling a bit stale’

Adrian Newey said he was starting to feel “stale” at Red Bull and that he wouldn’t have been “honest” with himself by staying.

F1 design guru Newey insisted that this feeling was largely of his own making and made the shock decision to leave Red Bull – the team he joined in 2006 and has since won six constructors’ titles and seven drivers’ titles – the announcement to come. of the Miami Grand Prix.

Adrian Newey explains the ‘outdated’ feeling behind Red Bull’s departure

Newey has since agreed to a move to Aston Martin from March 2025 to take up the newly created role of technical partner, while becoming a shareholder in the team.

Newey didn’t know Aston Martin was in his future when he decided to leave Red Bull, but it was a choice he felt he had to make.

“At Red Bull I started to feel a bit stale for various reasons,” he said on the website High performance podcast.

“And a lot of that is my own way of making and being and so on. So I in no way place the blame for this on others. I put myself in that position.

“And I just felt like, you know, the easiest thing was to just sit there at that moment. Obviously the team has struggled a bit since then, but at that point we were dominating, we had been dominating for the last few years. Just sit there, count the statistics, take the money and go home at night.

“But I wouldn’t have been honest with myself if I had done that, and it would have been all the wrong reasons.

“So I felt I needed some new stimulation. I have to do something. And so I took the step of actually resigning, not knowing what the future will bring, whether there are other teams, what offers there would be, what other offers there might be outside Formula 1, or I would actually say, “You know what, I’ve had a great career. Oh, well, I’m going sailing now and that’s enough for me.’ I just didn’t know.

“But I think sometimes if you don’t feel like you’re being honest with yourself, then that’s really not a good place to be. And I’m in that extremely fortunate position where I don’t have to work to live. It’s more like life to work. I think living to work is a bit too extreme, because I don’t live to work, but I do enjoy it.”

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Asked to explain what the signs are for him of getting old, Newey said, “You just feel like you’re going through the motions, like you’re doing it automatically. I think that’s probably the best way to put it. .

“You’re not waking up in the middle of the night, which can be painful, but waking up in the middle of the night with a new idea, or whatever, you’re just not feeling stimulated. I think that’s probably the easiest way to put it.

“So with the RB17, the track car, I woke up with ideas, but with the Formula 1 car I started to do that less and less, and that just felt wrong to me. I knew it was wrong.”

The Red Bull RB17 hypercar is Newey’s last project before he switches to Aston Martin.

Read more – Red Bull RB17: the £5 million hypercar that Adrian Newey now has full focus on