Christian Horner shares ‘agreement’ he made with Adrian Newey to prevent Red Bull technical staff leaving

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Christian Horner and Adrian Newey are two of the longest-serving figures at Red Bull Racing. Horner led the team from the outset in 2005, while Newey arrived a year later.

Working with legendary drivers like Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen, they have made history. Newey will leave Red Bull having contributed to seven drivers’ titles and six constructors’ championships.

The Englishman handed in his formal resignation in the spring. He isn’t serving a period of gardening leave, which means he can join new team Aston Martin in the first quarter of 2025.

Horner hasn’t brought in a replacement for Newey despite his mighty reputation. Instead, he’ll entrust existing technical staff like Pierre Wache and Enrico Balbo.

The team principal has been trying to ward off a potential exodus after Newey’s move. He’s lost sporting director Jonathan Wheatley (to Audi) and head of strategy Will Courtenay (to McLaren), but has otherwise consolidated his ranks with promotions.

Given that Red Bull produced the most dominant season in F1 history last year, it was inevitable that rival teams would try to poach their top off-track talent. Aston Martin hope acquiring Newey will turn them into a title-winning force.

Adrian Newey agreed to ‘step back from F1’ at the end of 2025, Christian Horner says

Speaking to Autosport, Horner revealed that Newey was going on to take a reduced role at Red Bull if he stayed. The plan was for the 65-year-old to be a ‘mentor’ and let his colleagues control the design process.

Horner felt this was necessary amid the threat of losing fellow technical staff to competitors. They may have been growing frustrated at Newey’s presence capping their influence.

Having achieved success at McLaren and Williams before he arrived (12 championships combined), he’s one of the most famous engineers in F1 history. That’s why his exit and the race for his signature were so heavily-publicised.

But some Red Bull staff were ‘quite pleased’ to see Newey go. They felt he was unduly dominating the spotlight and didn’t particularly like his working methods.

“The agreement that we had was at the end of ‘25 he was going to step back from F1 and really just be a mentor,” Horner said. “Otherwise, I was going to lose the other guys to some rival teams.”

Red Bull employees ‘shocked’ by ‘odd’ thing Adrian Newey has done after months of silence

For his part, Newey felt Horner wasn’t giving him enough credit for Red Bull’s success. The 50-year-old was trying to emphasise that cars like the record-breaking RB19 were a collective effort.

While it would be wrong to describe Newey’s departure as acrimonious, it hasn’t been completely amicable either. Indeed, Red Bull have removed Newey from their travel rota, unhappy that Aston Martin unveiled him while he was still their employee.

He had been due to attend select races before the end of the season, with his schedule determined by marketing opportunities for the RB17 hypercar. But he may now have made his final appearance on the Red Bull pit wall.

According to Peter Windsor, Red Bull employees are ‘shocked’ by Newey’s ‘odd’ move to Aston. Many of them haven’t spoken to their long-time co-worker since the announcement in May.