Aston Martin F1 Signs Adrian Newey in Five-Year, £150M Deal

His name’s Newey, Adrian Newey.

The Aston Martin Formula One Team confirmed this morning that it’s signed Adrian Newey, the sport’s most successful designer, from 2025 onwards on a five-year deal worth an estimated £30M annually. The long-rumoured signing is a hugely significant achievement for the Silverstone-based team as F1 heads towards its next big regulation cycle in 2026. Newey’s official title is Managing Technical Partner.

At their newly constructed Silverstone base, the team announced Newey’s signing at a press conference alongside further additions to their leadership team: newly appointed CEO Andy Cowell, formerly head of Mercedes’ engine department, Enrico Cordille, who joins as CTO from Ferrari, and Bob Bell who joins as Executive Director – Technical.

All were present today and seen together in emerald green shirts for the first time alongside team principal Mike Krack, and billionaire team owner Lawrence Stroll whose quixotic attempt to build a world championship-winning car for his son continues.

Newey’s official statement read as follows: “I am thrilled to be joining the Aston Martin Aramco Formula One Team. I have been hugely inspired and impressed by the passion and commitment that Lawrence brings to everything he is involved with. Lawrence is determined to create a world-beating team. He is the only majority team owner who is actively engaged in the sport… they have all the key pieces of infrastructure needed to make Aston Martin a world championship-winning team and I am very much looking forward to helping reach that goal.”

The story of Newey’s search for a new home, following the announcement of his departure from Red Bull Racing in May, has been one of the central talking points of the F1 paddock for months. Now, we finally have our answer.

A estimated salary in the tens of millions puts Newey’s annual compensation at a similar level to the sport’s top drivers and in line with entire departmental budgets across the motorsport world. The salary will reportedly include an equity stake in the team alongside various performance incentives. Can such a lofty fee be worth it?

At present Aston Martin sits a firm fifth in the 2024 F1 Constructors’ Championship with Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll ninth and tenth in the Drivers’ Championship respectively. A 372-point deficit to the Red Bull stands as a stark reminder of its relative underperformance this year. That seems a world away from Alonso’s stellar 2023 run of results which saw him claim six podiums in the opening eight races. Rather poetically, that year’s car was nicknamed ‘the green Red Bull’ as the team’s technical director Dan Fallows, an ex-Red Bull man himself, looked to apply the fundamental qualities of Red Bull’s 2022 car to the Silverstone team’s project. Aston Martin, though, ultimately finished fifth last year as its technical advantage dwindled from the season’s midpoint onwards.

It seems a choice between two paths exists here for Aston. Either you follow in the footsteps of Mercedes by buying an overperforming, undervalued privateer team and giving it the necessary resources and investment to build long-term championship success in motorsport’s top class; or take motorsport’s far more well-trodden path of wasted capital and unmet expectations most classically embodied by Toyota’s infamous money pit of an F1 entry in the mid to late 2000s.

Lawrence Stroll heaped praise on his new signing in his statement to the media, “It’s the biggest story since the Aston Martin name returned to the sport and another demonstration of our ambition to build a Formula One team capable of fighting for world championships. As soon as Adrian became available, we knew we had to make it happen.”.

Newey’s career has been punctuated by success at effectively every turn, no matter the team, regulation era, or racing category he was presented with. From IMSA and Indycar to Leyton House’s privateer entry, the championship-winning mid-90s Williams team, Ron Dennis, Hakkinen, and Raikkonen at McLaren and later the ‘last to first challenge’ of Red Bull’s rise to the top of the sport. His total of 25 combined World Drivers’ and Constructors' championships is a figure unmatched by anyone in the sport.

It’s a truly significant day for the team in British Racing Green, as it was predictably keen to stress to the host of international journalists and TV media in attendance this morning. A recent stock sale valued the team at between $1.5 to $2 Billion.

Once the dust settles on the day, microphones are switched off, and laptops closed, the challenge of acting on the day’s ambitious talk remains.  The sport is necessarily zero-sum. To take up space at the top of the rostrum means taking the place of the sport’s current front runners who are each also building, investing, and strategising from positions of greater strength to prevent the team in green from doing exactly that. 

F1 begins a street race double header this weekend as the paddock heads to Baku for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix before venturing to Singapore the following weekend.