Newey has ‘no plan’ for future after Red Bull

Adrian Newey says he has “no plan” for his future following his decision to quit Red Bull early next year.

Newey, regarded as the greatest Formula 1 designer, will leave in early 2025 after securing an early release from his position as chief technical officer.

The 65-year-old added that he was “very flattered” by Lewis Hamilton saying that it would be a “privilege” to work with Newey should the designer join him at Ferrari next year.

Newey told Sky Sports that he had been considering his future “for a little while now”.

And he alluded to the allegations of sexual harassment and coercive, controlling behaviour made by a female employee against team principal Christian Horner, which the 50-year-old denies.

Newey said: “I guess (I was thinking about it) over the winter a little bit, and then as events have unfolded this year I thought… I’m in a very lucky position where I don’t need to work to live. I work because I enjoy it.

“I just felt that now was a good time to step back and take a bit of a break and take stock of life, and go travelling a bit.”

Newey is also known to be unhappy about tensions within the team over who deserved credit for their recent success since 2022.

Horner has seemed to diminish Newey’s importance in some interviews and emphasise the role of the rest of the design group under technical director Pierre Wache.

Yet Newey regards the layout of that car – which has since been evolved into the 2023 and 2024 designs – as very much his creation.

Newey said he was planning to take his wife Amanda on a road trip around parts of Europe this summer, adding: “Then maybe at some point, I don’t know when, I’ll be standing in the shower and say: ‘Right, this is going to be the next adventure’. Right now, there is no plan.”

He added: “There comes a point, I think, where I just felt, as Forrest Gump said: ‘I’m feeling a little bit tired.’”

Newey and his manager Eddie Jordan, the former F1 team boss, negotiated an early release from his contract, which frees him to work for another team as soon as he leaves Red Bull next year.

He had been contracted to Red Bull until the end of 2025, with a year-long “non-compete” clause that in theory should have prevented him from joining another team before 2027.

However, Red Bull announced on Wednesday that Newey would leave “in the first quarter of 2025”. BBC Sport has been told that he should be free around late February/early March and can start working for another team straight away.

This would allow him to join a new team in time to have a significant impact on their design for the new technical rules that are being introduced for the 2026 season.

Newey said: “I do enjoy regulation changes, for sure. This current crop of regulations was the biggest regulation changes we’ve had since 1983 when flat-bottomed cars came in.

“I really enjoyed the challenge of all the research and detailed design of that [2022] car. The two subsequent cars are evolutions of that car and next year’s car will be the third evolution of that car. It’s been a great series, one that surprised me just how much there is in these cars actually. It’s been fun.”

Ferrari have approached him but Newey has not yet made up his mind whether to join the Italian team.