The midway point of every Formula 1 season is typically marked by summer transfer speculation. With contracts expiring at season’s end and seats opening up across the field, F1’s hottest properties enter negotiations with rival teams as they try to secure themselves the best deal and strongest shot at winning races.
The 2024 campaign has followed tradition to a T. Except for one small detail - rather than a driver being the most in-demand man in motorsport, most team’s wishlists have been topped by an illustrious car designer instead.
When he announced his decision to leave Red Bull after 19 seasons earlier this year, engineer Adrian Newey’s prestige ensured he glistened like a diamond in a field full of magpies.
With a stunning record of 13 drivers' championships and 12 constructors' titles across three different teams since his career in F1 properly began in 1988, and a reputation for an imperious understanding of aerodynamics, every F1 team with serious ambitions of winning weighed up a move for the man universally considered one of the most influential in the sport’s history.
Now - having been linked with the likes of Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren, Alpine, and Williams - Newey has finally made his decision, officially joining the Aston Martin team on a five-year contract.
Aston Martin only made their full-time return to F1 in 2021, and have been unable to win a race, never mind a championship, in the time since. So why did their project appeal to Newey more than that of any other team? Here are four key reasons why Newey may have been lured by the squad’s billionaire boss Lawrence Stroll.
Newey’s Aston Martin contract is worth a lot of money
Adrian Newey is about to become an even wealthier man
Let’s get this one out of the way first – Newey’s contract is widely reported to be worth a staggering £30m per year, inclusive of bonuses. That figure puts him on more money than all but two or three of F1’s highest-earning drivers, and is more than the vast majority of big-name athletes in other elite sports like football earn annually, too.
It is a scarcely believable sum of money, and it is highly unlikely any other team on the grid would have been willing to pay anything like it.
Newey’s trophy-laden career to date will have made him an extremely wealthy man already, of course, but at the age of 65 and with the free choice to do as he pleases, convincing him to remain dedicated to full-time work in an industry he has unquestionably already conquered has cost Stroll an almighty amount.
Having run Mercedes power units since their return to the grid, Aston Martin will instead partner with Japanese manufacturer Honda from 2026 onwards, when F1’s regulations undergo what is seen by many as the most significant overhaul in history.
Aston Martin are not a works F1 team – they do not design and build their own power units. Running an engine run by a rival with a works team on the grid, as is the case in their current relationship with Mercedes, always presents a problem for a team. More often than that, the works team is going to better understand and more successfully implement the power unit into their vehicle concept than a customer team can.
But now Aston Martin will have the full focus of Honda, who will not be operating a team of their own. And Honda power was behind Newey’s latest success with Red Bull, meaning designer and engine manufacturer have very recent experience of working together to successfully develop title-winning machinery.
Therefore, if Honda are able to deliver on the power unit side, Aston Martin have the potential to strike out on their own and become genuine title contenders in their own right. That potential will rest on the efficacy of the car design, which Newey – who has a stellar record of delivering pace-setting cars at the start of a new regulation era – has signed up to mastermind.
Fernando Alonso's two F1 titles were won in 2005 and 2006
Newey is long believed to have wanted to work with Fernando Alonso, the two-time world champion who moved to Aston Martin from Alpine in 2022 to replace the retiring Sebastian Vettel.
Despite reaching the age of 43 earlier this year, Alonso is still driving at something approaching his best, and was able to deliver consistent podiums in the first half of the 2023 season when Aston Martin gave him a car capable of challenging towards the front.
In the Spaniard, Aston Martin have one of the most aggressive, intelligent, and downright quickest drivers in F1 history, who appears still capable of fighting for a world championship if given the opportunity.
Newey will have wanted to know that the car he produces will be piloted by a driver capable of wringing the absolute best out of it, and in Alonso, Aston Martin have been able to offer him precisely that.
Aston Martin are building a super team around Newey
Aston Martin will be a force to be reckoned with under Adrian Newey
Stroll has already spent hundreds of millions of pounds on completely restructuring Aston Martin, which was previously known as Racing Point after he purchased the former Force India team.
The Canadian has financed the construction of an entirely new headquarters for the team, including manufacturing facilities, a wind tunnel, logistics centre and simulator. In addition, key members of personnel have been poached from rival squads, including technical director Dan Fallows, who was formerly a colleague of Newey’s at Red Bull.
Put simply, Stroll is throwing his enormous resources at Aston Martin with the aim of giving the team the best possible to chance to win titles in F1 in the near future. The chance to be part of a project as new, exciting, and as thoroughly well-resourced as theirs will no doubt have played a significant role in tempting Newey.
Whether all of the component parts of the Aston Martin project can come together to deliver the trophies Stroll and now Newey will be aiming for remains to be seen.
But for now, Stroll can laud the signing of F1’s most-wanted man over all his rivals in the paddock. And there is very little the uber-wealthy love more than bragging rights.
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