JANUARY 22, 2025

Red Bull's life without Newey

Red Bull is less than four weeks away from putting on track its first car that hasn’t been designed under Adrian Newey’s leadership since 2007 and that has obviously raised some doubts about the competitiveness of the RB21. Of course this year’s car will be very much an evolution of the championship-winning car that Newey still designed, but given the genial British engineer effectively stopped working on any Formula 1-related projects for the team at the start of last April, it has been under Pierre Waché’s leadership the new car was designed.

The Frenchman has admitted that, “clearly the feedback and advice from Adrian were very beneficial for us. I don’t want to dismiss what he did for the team and what he did for myself personally. He is a massively experienced person, very smart and very successful.” Nevertheless, Waché is confident the group he leads is perfectly capable of doing the job, saying that, “now we are where we are and our daily job didn’t change fundamentally besides that we don’t have anyone looking over our shoulder anymore and saying: ‘Hey guys, did you think about this or that?’ But, fundamentally, it doesn't change what we are doing."

The Frenchman added that, “the organisation didn’t change because we were already organised to be able to deal without his input, because it has happened in the past that he was a bit less present at some times than at other times. The main aspect is that his input is not there anymore, but the organisation didn’t change and you just have to deal without his input. We organise ourselves with a full technical team to cope and to look forward, not to look backwards.”

Nevertheless, looking at what happened to the last two teams Newey stopped working for, there’s good reason for Red Bull’s management to be a bit nervous. When Newey stopped working for Williams, at the end of 1996, he had already designed the following year’s car and it was in 1997 Jacques Villeneuve won the team’s last championship – 28 years ago!

Then, for ten years, Newey led McLaren’s technical department and the team returned to its winning ways, with Mika Hakkinen conquering two consecutive titles in 1998 and 1999. Newey left Ron Dennis’ team at the start of 2006 and while the team was still massively competitive the next two years, Hamilton winning his first title in 2008, soon after McLaren dropped down the order, spending nine years without winning a single Grand Prix.

With completely new regulations coming for next year, Red Bull’s new technical leadership’s test of fire will come with the design of the 2026-spec RB22. Only then we’ll have a full picture of how good Red Bull is without the man who helped it become a winning machine, at the same time Aston Martin will be the fifth Formula 1 team to benefit from his genial input.