Adrian Newey will leave Red Bull in the first quarter of 2025, ending a 19-year relationship that has brought six F1 constructors' titles and seven drivers' championships to Milton Keynes.
The Red Bull chief technical officer joined from McLaren in 2006, just its second season in F1. Now, the team must head into a new chassis and power unit era without the guidance of arguably the greatest engineer and designer in the championship's history.
There is a lot to unpack, so the RacingNews365 team are on hand to help navigate what his exit means for Red Bull and for F1 on the whole.
Here is what we had to say.
Jake Nichol - An opportunity and threat to Red Bull
Newey is already the greatest technical mind in Formula 1 history, and has nothing left to achieve in grand prix racing.
He’s the only person with titles from three teams on his CV – Williams, McLaren, and Red Bull, so why not add a fourth with Ferrari, if it is to be Maranello he heads to and restore the final of F1’s historic trio to title-winning ways after a near two-decade drought.
Purely on a personal level, whatever has gone on internally at Red Bull, to spend 19 years in a single job is incredibly longevity, and it is doubtful we’ll see something like that again, but his departure also allows opportunity for Red Bull.
Rightly or wrongly, Newey was the dominant technical figure, in the wider public eye at Red Bull, overshadowing the work done by others, including actual Technical Director Pierre Wache.
His departure as CTO should allow others to receive the public attention they deserve for their efforts but Red Bull must also be very careful not to allow this to be the start of the break-up of its team.
Losing Newey is bad enough – but it needs to do all it can to ensure it is Newey only and not others, with Max Verstappen top of that list.
Viewed by others:
Fergal Walsh - The beginning of the end to the dynasty?
Perhaps Red Bull should count itself lucky in some ways that Newey's exit comes while it is in such a dominating position. Red Bull is still suited to win the world championship both this year and next having held a significant advantage since 2022.
However, Red Bull will be facing its first regulation change without Newey in 2026 and with so much uncertainty surrounding the next batch of rules, it could present a huge headache for the Milton Keynes-based outfit.
While there is expertise at the team beyond Newey, none have the reputation that the 65-year-old has built across several decades of building championship-winning cars.
Newey has long remained committed to Red Bull and whether his exit has stemmed from the internal power struggle or the desire to work for a new team before bowing out of F1, it matters not.
Red Bull has lost one of the key pieces to its successful set-up and it instantly raises questions over the future of the squad.
Will Max Verstappen follow suit? Does the Dutchman see Newey as his key to success at Red Bull?
Red Bull is risking losing so much more than a successful figure to spearhead the project in Newey - there is a chance that everything it has built over the last several years could soon come crashing down.
Nick Golding - Red Bull's unsolvable problem
If we are being completely honest, it is the news we were all expecting based on the current Red Bull rumblings. But that does not make the news of Newey's departure any less damning!
It had seemed that Red Bull had overcome its behind-the-scenes drama somewhat after a turbulent start to the season with the investigation into team principal Christian Horner, but Newey's exit demonstrates that the outfit remains in a critical situation.
Red Bull without Newey is unimaginable, yet that is what we will have to get used to when he officially leaves the company.
Newey has been behind all of Red Bull's winning cars, with his shoes being impossible to fill. This will amplify the pressure on Max Verstappen to potentially leave, as this puts the Milton Keynes-based outfit in an ever more precarious position ahead of the new power unit regulations in 2026.
The big question is what is next for Newey, and most fingers do appear to be pointing at Ferrari.
Samuel Coop - Newey leaving is a bigger loss to Red Bull than if Verstappen goes too
The magnitude of Newey’s departure from Red Bull cannot be understated. His influence on the team over the past near-two decades has been profound. He’s helped transform the team from an insurgent outlier, disrupting the long-held establishment, into one of the two prevailing forces in F1 over the last 15 years.
He’s won championships with three teams (McLaren and Williams being other two, of course). For context, no driver has achieved that since Juan Manuel Fangio won F1 drivers’ titles with four different teams in the 1950s – before the constructors’ championship was established, mind. Whilst not a driver himself, I think it underscores just how important Newey has been to the teams he has worked for - and can he himself win with a fourth team?
With him leaving Red Bull in early 2025 and stepping away from F1 development immediately, you have to believe he will leave a void in the team’s preparations for the new rules slate in 2026. Can anyone fill that vacuum in the short to medium term? I’m not convinced.
Whilst the situation at Red Bull is dynamic and multi-faceted, as it has been for months, the internal power struggle that precipitated Newey leaving may well do the same for Max Verstappen – and Newey’s departure will no doubt compound the risk of it, potentially facilitating it too.
However, Newey leaving will be more detrimental to the team than a hypothetical Verstappen exit. After all, Red Bull has won without Verstappen; it has not won without Newey.
Most read
In this article
Join the conversation!