Recipe for success, or too many cooks in the kitchen?

Aston Martin have won the race for the prized signature of legendary designer Adrian Newey, with the 65-year-old confirmed to join the Lawrence Stroll-bankrolled outfit after a near two-decade stint with reigning world champions Red Bull Racing.

The announcement came from the new state-of-the-art AMR Technology Campus, with Newey being revealed as Managing Technical Partner of Aston Martin as well as a shareholder, starting his new appointment on March 1 2025.

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“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,” Newey said in a team-issued statement.

“Lawrence is determined to create a world-beating team. He is the only majority team owner who is actively engaged in the sport. His commitment is demonstrated in the development of the new AMR Technology Campus and wind tunnel at Silverstone, which are not only state of the art but have a layout that creates a great environment to work in.

“Together with great partners like Honda and Aramco, 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.”

Having designed cars that have won a combined 25 world championships for both drivers and constructors from the iconic FW14B for Williams in 1992, Newey is the most successful F1 car designer in history and it’s no wonder when the paddock caught scent that he could be ending his association with Red Bull – it was as if Christmas came early.

Initially it was thought that the stars had finally aligned for the Brit to accomplish two of his career regrets with a move to Ferrari, as expressed in the F1 Beyond the Grid podcast last year where Newey stated he’d love to work with seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton and fabled Scuderia.

Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur, who will have Hamilton joining his team next year told French newspaper L’Equipe that indeed there were discussions with Newey about coming to Maranello for 2025 and beyond.

“But probably his ideas were different from what I had in mind for him. Maybe one day we will find common ground. But as I said, it is not an individual that changes the outcome of a team. The group is always stronger than the individual.”

Given his immense CV, it is simple to conclude that the appointment of Newey will guarantee success for any organisation. Looking at what he accomplished at McLaren in the late ’90s after their championship drought and then taking upstarts Red Bull from the miring remains of Jaguar to a juggernaut in the early 2010s and again in the ground-effect era of aero regulations.

However, Formula One is such a complex sport and in an age where technical department management structures are becoming multi-faceted, the importance of having a diluted or convoluted team is important.

Think McLaren, with their signing of ex-Ferrari designer David Sanchez – when they already had the strength of Rob Marshall, Peter Prodomou and Neil Houldey working in harmony. It left the Frenchman on the outer, as his supposed need for linearity didn’t quite fit the now proven successful structure under Zak Brown and Andrea Stella.

Stroll’s Aston Martin team have indeed made a swathe of impressive management signings, since the Canadian billionaire rebranded the former Racing Point nee Force India squad in 2021, with the likes of Newey’s former protege in Dan Fallows, Enrico Cardile from Ferrari and now ex-Mercedes engine dynamo Andy Cowell.

The adage of too many cooks in the kitchen comes to mind, which can commonly be a recipe for disaster and there is an element of that risk for the Silverstone-based outfit should everyone not align under whatever structure employed for Newey by Stroll.

There is a sentiment too, that Stroll’s solution to finding success in F1 is by throwing money at it – which without the care and precision that a high-performance sport requires – can easily backfire. Regardless of whether the Canadian is running out of patience or not.

Running out of patience too, will be the team’s star driver in Fernando Alonso who at 43 years old is the oldest on the grid and still believing he can win that elusive third world championship. The Spaniard re-signed with the team for beyond 2026, when the new engine regulations are introduced, and Aston Martin will link up with Honda – whom Alonso has his own checkered history.

The arrival of Newey is perhaps faith renewed for the mercurial Alonso, who powered to six podiums in the first eight races of 2023 when Aston Martin were the second fastest to Red Bull – before an unceremonious drop in performance which left them fifth in the constructor’s championship. A place they occupy again in 2024, but a mammoth 218 points behind fourth-placed Mercedes.

If the cards are played right from Stroll and his consortium of ownership, then Newey’s appointment is an absolute masterstroke and could see the famous British marque at last breakthrough as a bonafide spearhead in Formula One. Conversely, it would do more harm to Aston Martin’s reputation than Newey’s if it goes wrong.