Correct, according to Erik van Haren he’s stepping away from F1 immediately and will be free to leave Red Bull altogether at the beginning of 2025, which is when teams will start developing their 2026 cars.
Motorsport-Total says that Eddie Jordan and Newey’s lawyers negotiated this deal with Oliver Mintzlaff. Apparently Newey and Horner were not present themselves in any of the negotiations.
They also speculate that part of the deal is Newey assuring not to talk about his opinion on Hornergate.
I feel like it’s somewhat safe to assume his opinions on that. I guess the real question is does he have other information that could be damning that he’s now not allowed to talk about.
I wonder if this will trigger the exit clause in the contract of Verstappen. And if it does, would he actually exit? He seems like the kind of guy that wants to win, but doesn’t mind a bit of money if his car doesn’t allow him to win. Merc will pay bigtime to replace Hamilton with Verstappen next year.
I for one hope he gets into midget racing, just because I grew up with a guy that became a semi-decent midget racer and I’d like Max to go bring attention to and dominate that
Yes but there’s a marked difference between winning every race having competition for it and winning every race by 40 seconds because your car has a rocket boost or something
Red Bull are still favourites to have the best car for the next year(s). Everyone here sees Newey as a magic bullet but seems to forget that other people can indeed build great cars. He was at Red Bull throughout the Mercedes Dominance.
Newey has designed some duds, nobody’s perfect. But more realistically, even if Newey has a hand in making a very performant package, it doesn’t mean others won’t also pull off the same.
RB already has the benefit of a huge headstart. It’s also important to remember that it’s kind of up in the air who will have the best engine in 2026, which Newey has zero control over.
Everyone here sees Newey as a magic bullet but seems to forget that other people can indeed build great cars.
If there’s too much politics going on then that’ll make it difficult to work as a good team. Newey doesn’t limit himself to just designing. He also wants to be involved with drivers and how the team is setup.
His book is pretty telling on this. At various times it wasn’t his design work that made a change, it was things like how the team is setup.
I’m sure that you’re right that Red Bull will have the best car for the next few years. Even without significant development they’re far enough ahead aerodynamically that I bet their development could stagnate a little for a year or two before other teams caught up.
Having said that Newey does seem to have an innate understanding of aerodynamics than even other good engineers black. This doesn’t make it impossible for other people to build good cars but it does mean he can do it faster with less iterations.
It’s always been my understanding that most of Mercedes dominance was due mostly to engine development. Especially when Red Bull was using Renault engines. Mercedes could just brute force their way to the front even if they were doing it with less efficient aerodynamics. Oh and of course just throwing money at the problem seeing that was pre-cost cap. With the cost cap and limitations on CFD and wind tunnel time. The number of iterations matters a lot more now.
Hmmm interesting. I don’t know the exact wording of the clause obviously. But from what I understood if there were changes in key personnel responsible for the performance of the team and car, he would be free to break the contract early. I would think someone like Newey would count for that.
I think for anybody in F1 that’s all they want and only leave to another series if no seat is available. And even then they might sit out a year whilst lobbying for a seat. So I would expect Verstappen to go to another team before ever leaving.
Verstappen is young enough that he doesn’t have the Ferrari dream, many people before them driving for Ferrari in F1 was seen as the ultimate goal. But for the younger generation who have seen mostly the bad years for Ferrari, this isn’t a dream as much anymore.
He will remain involved in and committed to this exciting project until its completion.
So have we all been massively gnoshed off by the RB shit talking PR game with the rumours he’s joining another F1 team (possibly Ferrari)? Or will he be able to “complete” this exciting project before next season?
He says in his letter that the RB17 hypercar is “in final stages”. I expect this is something RB insisted on for his statement, as they’ve been using almost identical language in their press releases on the matter. They want wealthy buyers to know it’s still a Newey joint.
I don’t think an aerodynamics specialist has much to do in the final stages of a production road car, his input would likely have been much earlier in the process.
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