The timeline of Adrian Newey’s decision to move to Aston Martin

Adrian Newey admitted that he didn’t know where his Formula 1 future lay after his decision to quit the Red Bull team. There were plenty of options on the table from other teams, but projects outside of F1 and even retirement were considered by the revered designer.

At his unveiling at Aston Martin on Tuesday, Newey spoke of needing a new challenge; with Red Bull, he’d helped turn it from a midfield outfit into a championship winner and then pounced on the 2022 regulations to imbue the team with a new era of dominance.

With his new role at Aston Martin, officially ‘technical managing partner’, he’ll be looking to recapture the same lightning in a bottle and move the prestigious marque to the front of the field.

Newey spoke about the lengthy decision time needed for him to chart his next course. After becoming more involved in the 2022 Red Bull project, the Briton took a step back through 2023 and 2024 – so jumping back into a more hands-on role was also a factor in his deliberations.

But rumours that Newey was set to step down from his Red Bull role had already come to the fore in March amid the team’s tumult, in which a power struggle between Christian Horner and Helmut Marko accelerated the undercurrent underneath the misconduct allegations against Horner earlier this year.

Whether it was of any consequence to Newey will likely never be known, but it was known that cracks had started to form at that stage – as the Thai side and the Austrian side of Red Bull GmbH were in conflict.

March – First suggestions that Newey’s long-term Red Bull future was in doubt

A scheduled trackside absence at the Australian Grand Prix was an unfounded base for suggestions that Newey may move to a different project. Rumours that he would start to devote all of his time to Red Bull’s RB17 hypercar emerged, but he was indeed due to return to his trackside role at the Japanese Grand Prix two weeks later.

However, this was also when Aston Martin made its first play for Newey. Perhaps seeking to capitalise on the off-track disorder at Red Bull, Lawrence Stroll is said to have offered Newey a princely sum of money to change postcodes, offering him the challenge of getting Aston Martin to the front as the 2024 car did not come out of the blocks as quickly as its predecessor.

The…