Anyone else surprised at the short gardening leave? Him starting in March changes things. I thought he would be out at least until September of 2025,which would hurt his participation in the 2026 design. If, however, he does start in March, he can absolutely be a major part of the redesign and that changes the calculations for who might be a force in 2026.
Anyone else surprised at the short gardening leave?
Well, technically he’s already on gardening leave as he’s been put to work on the hyper car project for a few months now and has not been involved with the F1 side of Red Bull since.
Anyone else surprised at the short gardening leave?
Yep, I am. How much leverage did he have or how much money did he give up to keep it that short?
I think it was reported when they announced his exit at Red Bull that he was able to secure really favorable conditions.
He had a lot of leverage due to their ongoing hypercar project they wanted him to finish.
March 25 is a little late if the concept for 26 is in a fundamental direction he thinks is crap, its like not impossible but they would be unlikely to hit the first race with a class leading car. I guess Aston could save up budget, wind tunnel time, and super computer runs until he starts then try and run faster than everyone else. One things for sure, going to be exciting to see the order in 26 as this is now going to be a major shake up.
100%, but I was imagining that, since Newey is still around the F1 team during races, he would be forced to sit out 2025, which would mean he would join AM even later in the process.
March is late but much better than in the 4th trimester or something like it.
But yeah, it will be exciting, just hoping there is no one that hits the bullseye and totally dominates at the start.
I am not confident that we will see as widespread competition as we have this season, as the PU is completely changing and the aero is being tweaked. I am to worried we will see one team to develop the PU with a massive advantage again, but I hope not.
That is my fear too. Especially because that is what usually happens, especially with such a complete revolution of the regulations.
It will be a pity, just as this set of regs is becoming super competitive…
It’s certain that someone will be better than the others by a reasonable amount on day 1. The chances of them all being within a handful of hp, with equal drivability and reliability etc is near zero. It will then be years before the engines improve enough to be considered similar across the board.
I’m very surprise with the fact that Adrian accepted design a car for Lance Stroll. But, if he starts working at Aston Martin next year, maybe the team can do a better season than this year.
He would design a car for Satan if Lawrence still paid 30 million, gave him shares, gave him authority over his dept. and some people who tried to run away from him (Fallows CANNOT be happy), allowed him to remain at home, etc.
Lance is no all-time great, but it 100% beats designing cars at Williams for better drivers with a much shittier infrastructure. Or having to move to Italy (which anyone not willing to do is clearly insane, but that’s another matter) when he does not want to, having to play office politics at Ferrari, etc.
It’s not insane to not want to move away from friends and family, uproot your immediate family, and move somewhere where you don’t speak the language, is culturally different, and might be a lot hotter than what you’re used to in a way that you don’t like.
If it really was insane to not want to do that, when the UK was in the EU and had free movement you would’ve seen millions of people moving to Italy (especially considering the vastly cheaper housing). And we’d be seeing it from other EU countries even now. But we aren’t. There’s more to life than hot weather and nice food.
Not comparable because not everyone in the UK was going to be paid millions and millions while doing it. Also, that was hyperbole, sorry if it was not explicit.
I uprooted my family for five years and it was a brilliant experience for everyone. My kid speaks four languages, we learned a bunch of new ways of thinking and living, and expanded ourselves quite a bit. It has tough moments no doubt, but it is worth it, especially for the kids.
