The men of the Ferrari team left for Miami on Tuesday 30 April, but team principal Frederic Vasseur did not board with them. No. Vasseur took a plane not to the USA, but to London where today, May 1st, or already yesterday evening, he should meet (or has already met) Adrian Newey to define the contract that will bind him to Ferrari starting from 2025. This was revealed by the Gazzetta dello Sport.
Newey, with his lawyers, at the end of a long meeting held at the Red Bull headquarters, terminated the contract that bound him to the team until 2025 and for which he has worked since 2006, winning everything and more with Sebastian Vettel and with Max Verstappen, thus achieving an incredible feat with a team born from nothing thanks to the crazy desire of the visionary Dietrich Mateschitz. An undoubtedly painful separationso much so as to convince Newey to end the relationship with Christian Horner and Helmut Marko well in advance.
As has already been written several times, the idyll between the parties was damaged by the conflicts between the shareholders of the Red Bull team, by the affair involving Horner for the harassment of his assistant and from which he was acquitted at the end of a thorough internal investigation, and for Horner’s recent surprisingly unflattering statements about Newey.
However, it seemed that everything was proceeding in the best way, as the Red Bull team was not affected at all by the internal events. The victories and the poles have characterized this first part of the championship, the images proposed several times have shown good harmony between the leaders involved in the non-racing events, but evidently, something has broken in Newey’s soul.
Lewis Hamilton’s arrival at Ferrari, the flattery of Vasseur and president John Elkann, therefore convinced Newey to leave his beloved Great Britain to attempt a new adventure in F1 at the age of 65. On the English island, many took Newey for granted at Aston Martin, which has its headquarters not far from where he lives. Newey has in fact always avoided abandoning his “territory”, he did so at the beginning of his career when he emigrated to the USA at a very young age to work with March on the Indy project. Then, he never moved from his land again.
We just have to wait for the official status of this sensational turning point in the Newey affair. And one can only give credit to Vasseur for bringing an incredible revolution to Maranello, first with the agreement stipulated before the start of the season with Lewis Hamilton, snatching him away from rivals Mercedes, and now with the arrival of Newey taken away to Red Bull. You strengthen yourself by weakening your enemies, Vasseur’s strategy is that of a true general.
Newey’s exit from Red Bull’s front door now risks triggering an earthquake regarding the future of the Milton Keynes team. Why Max Verstappen he will certainly not be happy about the new situation that awaits him, even if the abilities of the technical director Pierre Waché are not discussed, who has worked closely with Newey for years and years, gleaning his working methodologies. Will it be enough to convince Verstappen not to give in to the strong pressure that Toto Wolff is exerting to bring him to Mercedes?
It should be remembered that starting from 2026, Red Bull will no longer benefit from the current engines still supported by Honda, but will have to make them in-house with the support, which is not yet clear, from Ford. A very exciting bet for Red Bull, but full of pitfalls and which only increases the doubts in Verstappen’s clan, especially his father Jos who has already sown doubts about Max’s permanence within the team with which he is about to go to take their fourth world title.
