The arrival of Adrian Newey at Aston Martin is one of the many reasons why the team is aiming to reach the top of F1, where only a select few have managed to get to. The engineer, who has only been in his new role for three months, has breathed new life into the team, a hopeful atmosphere, but he himself is cautious, saying that things are not that simple and it will not be an easy road.
Newey and his arrival at Aston Martin
On March 3, Adrian Newey officially began what is likely to be his last adventure in F1, his final project to build a championship-winning team. At 65, once he left Red Bull, he considered retiring, but this opportunity arose, and after negotiating with Lawrence Stroll and inventing a new position for himself, he decided to take on the Canadian magnate’s challenge.
“When I was chatting with Lawrence Stroll, discussing the future, I came up with the suggestion of technical managing partner.” After long hours of negotiation, “Lawrence has very kindly placed his trust in me to be his partner, developing the technical side of the team, driving our technical capabilities and improving our engineering prowess.”
The most successful engineer in F1 history talks about his arrival at the team. The beginning is always surrounded by questions and unknowns: what will you find, what will the people be like? In Newey’s case, he has only good things to say about Aston Martin for how they have welcomed him.
“When you join a new team, it’s always difficult to know what the experience is going to be like.” “Every time I’ve joined a new team, each one has been very different. The first thing I can say about the team is that everyone has been very welcoming, which is great, it hasn’t always been the case when I started with a new team.”
Adrian Newey calls for time
Adrian Newey is known for being very conservative and careful with his words, preferring to err on the side of caution rather than ambition. He uses his early days at Jordan to compare Aston Martin, a small team outside the elite that wanted to compete with the best. Now the team is surrounded by heavyweights in F1, but it will take more for the team to really compete at the top, and he doesn’t see it happening in the short term, but he does see it happening.
“There are a lot of very, very good individuals. We just have to try to get them to work together, maybe in a slightly more organized way.”
Compared to its beginnings, “that’s simply a result of the roots of the Jordan team, which became Force India, which became Racing Point.” “As such, it was always a small team, but with slightly above-average performance, to now, in a very short space of time, become a very large team, which, in reality, has underperformed this year. A lot of it is about getting everyone to calm down and learn how to get the best out of individuals.”
Therefore, Newey calls for caution. It is important to set goals, but the most important thing is to create a team that works in harmony and without any more pressure than already exists in F1. That is why he is calling for calm at Aston Martin. At no point does he say that it is not possible to achieve the objectives, but euphoria is very dangerous. This is coming from the most successful engineer in the history of the sport, a man who measures his words, who is cautious, but who only understands the world of racing through victories.