Newey has decided to leave Red Bull after a two-decade stint as the team’s stalwart designer, playing an instrumental role in designing the cars that propelled Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen to a total of seven drivers’ world championships and six constructors’ titles for Red Bull.

The news of Newey’s impending departure was first reported by German outlet Auto Motor und Sport and since been confirmed to Autosport by sources with knowledge of the situation.

Despite only signing a fresh Red Bull deal last year, Newey’s future at the Milton Keynes squad has been the subject of intense speculation in recent weeks.

Red Bull is still embroiled in an ongoing internal power struggle between the Thai side of the business, which supports team principal Christian Horner, and the Austrian side including team advisor Helmut Marko.

The issue came to a head at the start of the 2024 season after an internal investigation into allegations of misconduct by Horner against a female member of staff, a probe which dismissed the claims against the 50-year-old.

Newey is understood to be unsettled by Red Bull’s situation and the saga around Horner, which has led to a shock decision to inform the team management that he has decided to walk out.

Adrian Newey, Chief Technology Officer, Red Bull Racing, speaks with Christian Horner, Team Principal, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

The news presents a huge blow for Red Bull, which is currently cruising to another world championship with Verstappen and its dominant RB20.

Verstappen still has a contract with the squad until the end of 2028, but made it clear in recent weeks that his future of the team heavily depends of all the «pillars» of its success remaining in place.

The Dutchman is informally known to have an exit clause in his deal in case Marko leaves the organisation, but it is not known if he has a similar option for a departure by Newey.

Newey’s next move is not yet known. As previously reported by Autosport, the 65-year-old received a big-money offer from Aston Martin owner Lawrence Stroll over the Saudi Grand Prix weekend.

He has also long been admired by Ferrari, whose advances he has repeatedly turned down in the past.

The terms of Newey’s gardening leave are understood to be the subject of further talks.

Previously, Newey designed the Williams that helped Damon Hill win the 1996 world championship. He then moved to McLaren, where he also found success conceiving Mika Hakkinen’s championship winning cars in 1998 and 1999.

He stayed with the Woking team until Red Bull convinced him to join its ambitious project in 2006.

Red Bull Powertrains will be working in conjunction with Ford to help deliver the engine that will power the current world champion squad for F1’s new rules era.

It already has its dynos hard at work in evaluating the performance of its new turbo-hybrid design and while there have been various rumours about the level of progress Red Bull is making with its project, Horner insists everything is on track.

Speaking to Autosport about where things were at, Horner said: “With the engine, we’re on an aggressive curve being a brand new power unit manufacturer but the team is really rising to that challenge.

“Our facilities are complete, both from a test and development point of view with dynos and rig rooms, etc, and manufacturing capability.

“But two years in the engine world is a very small period of time. We’re on a steep learning curve, but we’re on that curve and where we would expect to be on that curve at this point in time.”

While Red Bull does not know the progress that is being made at other manufacturers, Horner says that it laid out some performance levels that it reckons it needed to reach on its roadmap to 2026 – and that are being met so far.

“We are hitting the targets that we’re setting ourselves,” he said. “Now, how those targets stack up to our competitors is always difficult to know. But the effort that’s going in behind the scenes is huge, because it is literally a race against the clock to the start of 2026.”

The uncertainty about the performance of Red Bull’s 2026 power unit prompted speculation earlier this year that it could be a factor in prompting Max Verstappen to question his long-term future at the squad.

However, the three-time world champion insisted that it was far too early to be concerned about how things were looking this far out from the engine running for the first time on track.

“I mean, if I have to speculate about everything… I might be worried if I’m still alive tomorrow, right?,» the Dutchman said about any potential engine fears.  «So, I don’t really worry about that too much.

«Of course, I am in close contact with Christian about that and the people working there. Everyone’s working flat out, so there is no need to panic about that. It’s still not 2026.

«We know that it is a very big task, we don’t take that lightly. And of course, with so many well-established engine manufacturers, we also don’t think it’s going to be easy to beat them.

«But we have a lot of good people working on the project and we’re very excited about it. So time will tell, of course, where it’s going to be.»