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There's no retirement just yet for Adrian Newey, who in 2025 will join an Aston Martin team that on paper at least is absolutely brimming with top Formula 1 engineering talent.
Is his arrival the missing piece that misfiring technical team needs to join F1's elite, and is Aston Martin now destined for ultimate success on a scale Newey's three most recent teams have enjoyed? Or is that too simplistic a view - and are some potential clashes being overlooked?
Our contributors explore those questions and plenty more:
F1's next standard-setting team?
Edd Straw
The recruitment of Newey, on top of the prodigious investment since taking over the ailing Force India team when it was in administration in August 2018, means Aston Martin has everything it needs to be far more than just a winning team in F1. It has the potential to be one that sets new standards.
Throughout F1 history, various teams have had spells when they have raised the bar for how a team operates and been rewarded with prodigious on-track success. That not only leads to wins and championships, but forces rivals to up their game.
Newey was part of that at Red Bull, which astounded rivals with how quickly it could produce upgrades in its first spell of dominance, and at Williams when technical standards were driven upwards. F1 history is punctuated by such teams whose names will be familiar - Lotus, Williams, McLaren, Mercedes, Ferrari - and Aston Martin can aspire to join that illustrious roll-call.
It's not just about Newey, who is just the final ingredient in Aston Martin's mix. Big spending is no guarantee of success in F1, but it is a pre-requisite of it and Lawrence Stroll cannot be faulted for the ambition and willingness to back that up with cash. The potential trump card is the new state-of-the-art factory, complete with cutting-edge windtunnel and drive-in-loop simulator which is aimed at being optimised for F1's cost cap era.
With the arrival of a time when, in theory at least, you can't outspend your main rivals even if you wanted to, that has moved the goalposts of what an F1 team needs to be successful. Financial efficiency has always been key, but if you can grind every last penny out of each pound in terms of translating it into performance, something the factory is conceived to help do, then you can outperform your rivals.
It remains to be seen whether Aston Martin will push up F1's standards and become the next Red Bull or Mercedes. Certainly, it can't be said to have maximised the potential even during the transition period and that indicates there's still plenty to work on. But as the saying goes, Rome wasn't built in a day and in Newey it now has F1's master architect.
Aston Martin really does have everything it needs. Now it's only a question of whether the culture, leadership and structure comes together to realise that vast potential.
Everything else has to work too
Scott Mitchell-Malm
You'll read various versions that signing Newey is as close to a guarantee of success as there is in F1. But signing him on the eye-watering money that has reportedly been agreed with Aston Martin - up to £30million a year with shares in the team reportedly offered as well - must result in success.
Someone's worth is relative to who is paying for them. What Ferrari might not consider good value for Newey isn't the same as Aston Martin: a team that is further adrift and one that, despite its already impressive technical roster, has lacked some finesse with these regulations to develop as effectively as others.
That kind of limitation, if it perseveres, will undermine everything that Aston Martin is building. The new factory, the windtunnel, the works Honda deal, Fernando Alonso: it's all for nothing if the technical team produces a decent car over the winter and then can't progress.
If Newey changes that - and despite his track record it's still an if - then whatever he's being paid will be considered worth it to Aston Martin. If it wins them a world championship, the prize money and commercial value will more than make up for the spend.
If it doesn't work, regardless of the reason, then it's an expensive failure. Whether it's because accommodating Newey proves harder than expected, because there's a clash somewhere, because other areas of the project are a letdown: it doesn't matter. It won't have been worth it.
If you spend this much on the 'final piece of the puzzle', the rest of the puzzle better actually be well put together. Recruiting Newey puts pressure on everything else to be up to the necessary standard so that the high-earning 'plug in and play' recruit can be exactly that. Otherwise what's the point?
What about the romantic option?
Ben Anderson
I genuinely feel a bit torn about this move. On the one hand, I'm happy Newey has chosen a team like Aston Martin over, say, Ferrari, because Aston appears, from the outside at least, to be in much greater need of Newey's influence.
It would seem to automatically improve Aston's chances of becoming a genuine presence in the fight at the front, and perhaps then maintaining the sort of overachievement we saw in early-2023 when Ferrari and Mercedes (and McLaren) were underperforming.
If Red Bull doesn't fall (further) off a cliff without Newey around, then F1 will be overall better off for having five teams rather than four competing for the championship. It also greatly increases Fernando Alonso's chances of securing that elusive third world title before he retires.
But the other part of me is a little disappointed that Newey's chosen the latest attempt at creating a shiny, new megabucks F1 team over something more challenging or romantic.
I don't mean Ferrari in this case - that’s now at least four failed attempts to lure Newey to Maranello and feels like maybe it won't ever happen - but I do think it would have been much more fun to see Newey turn up at a place like Williams.
To anyway utilise his genius to return a genuine independent midfield team to the front of the grid - a team he helped transform into a serial winner once before - would have had a wonderful sense of closing the loop about it.
But anyway, I get it: Newey's almost of retirement age so time is of the essence, he really believes in Honda, wants to work with Alonso, will have all the latest Stroll-purchased toys to play with in trying to fix Aston's problems, and can make some serious bank while he does so. Good luck to him!
Crucial bargaining power - but will Aston use it?
Josh Suttill
A factory Honda engine? Check. Brand-new, top-of-the-range facilities? Check. F1's best designer? Check.
Newey's signing is further evidence of the pulling power Aston Martin is accumulating and that can extend to drivers too if the team allows it to.
Fernando Alonso has a long-term deal but exactly how long he stays is up for debate, beyond the end of 2026.
With a Newey-shaped ball now in its court, Aston can afford to be far more aggressive with getting Alonso to recommit beyond 2026 - as well as assessing if he's still the best lead driver available.
With its new hand, could it attract a George Russell or Oscar Piastri, drivers who don't want to be in the shadow of Kimi Antonelli or Lando Norris? And you'd imagine Carlos Sainz would walk away from Williams for a return to a factory team. If Alex Albon beats him at Williams then you've got another proven and poachable asset there too.
Or does it even offer a better alternative to Red Bull than Mercedes does for Max Verstappen?
Of course, the elephant in the room is whether it's willing to hold Lance Stroll to a similar performance standard.
If that's still not the case, then it's a question of who out of Alonso/Russell/Piastri/Sainz/Albon + Stroll can best utilise the goods produced by its big signing.
Has Newey signed up for more than we all think?
Glenn Freeman
If the figures being reported around this deal are accurate - and I'm sure they are - I wonder how quickly Aston Martin is going to expect results.
This team is hugely ambitious, and its ownership has shown a clear willingness to invest heavily in realising those ambitions. Given when Newey will start work, I presume the message will be "all eyes on 2026" but, if Aston Martin doesn't start the new rules era right at the sharp end, how quickly will Newey and the technical team he's a part of come under pressure to make big strides in a short space of time?
This doesn't feel like it will be a continuation of the role Newey held in recent years at Red Bull, where he almost got to act as a consultant, getting involved in bits and pieces that took his interest, and feeding in ideas he felt would be valuable - often to devastatingly brilliant effect on track.
Naturally, now his Red Bull time is coming to an end, some will be keen to underplay how involved he's really been there in recent years, perhaps creating a false impression of a man spending most of his time taking it easy and occasionally chipping in from a distance while the full-time technical team at Red Bull was doing all the real work that created championship-winning cars for Max Verstappen.
Maybe I'm being naive, but it seems unlikely that Aston Martin would pay megabucks for a glorified consultant, even one with a track record as astonishing as Newey's. And if that is the arrangement that's been agreed here, I'd have big concerns about how the team ownership will feel about how expensive this deal is if success on track isn't almost instant.
If Newey's going to be the addition that helps turn this team into the F1 powerhouse it wants to be, then it feels to me like he's just signed up for the most actively involved F1 role he's held in years.
Is another piece missing?
Sam Smith
No one can dispute that Adrian Newey is a design genius. His track record is just too strong for any serious debate on that question.
But one thing that Newey cannot control is the new regulations that F1 will adopt in 2026. That will be when a new parameter of design skills will come into effect and where some elements of trial and error may come in to play.
Newey helped bring success to Williams and McLaren very quickly with the FW14 and the MP4/13 respectively. Yet it didn’t happen overnight almost two decades ago when he joined Red Bull, and I suspect the same may be said for his new role at Aston Martin.
The question then will be one of patience, particularly on the part of Lawrence Stroll. But presumably, any natural impulsiveness on Stroll's part will be diluted by the realisation that a large chunk of his budget is being invested in F1's greatest ever designer.
With its technical future assured, the questions will then turn to what percentage a designer can contribute to a title-winning campaign in the new ruleset, in correlation to that of having a gifted top-line driver. Is one needed more than the other? Or do you, as in the case of the Sebastian Vettel- and Max Verstappen-plus-Newey axises, have to lock in both?
If the latter still rings true then Aston Martin needs to get a top-line driver for 2026 at the latest because both Alonso (age) and Lance Stroll (pedigree and mistakes) are clearly not the team's future. Only then might it be known if Newey's ridiculously successful winning streak can continue.
This will answer an important question
Gary Anderson
It is rumoured that Newey didn't go to Ferrari because Fred Vasseur wasn't keen on letting him put in place the technical structure he wanted. Newey won't have a problem with that under Stroll's ownership, but once that's in place it is no guarantee of success and could be when the problems really start.
Stroll has not been shy about employing top-end engineers and handing the responsibility of getting them all to pull in the same direction to Newey is not going to happen overnight. Employing, or perhaps giving Adrian a stake in the company, is a positive move given his success in F1. But Newey has to be in the right role with the right level of responsibility or he won't thrive.
Newey is a thinker, a creative person. If he wants to go and sit in a darkened room while he thinks things through, then he needs to have the opportunity to do that. If he is constantly fighting fires and under pressure for quick fixes, then you won't get the best out of him.
That means if there are any grey areas in the operational structure, he won't be at his creative best and there will be room for politics to become a problem.
This move also means we are now going to get the definitive answer to the question that has been unanswered since F1 began: is it the car or the driver that brings a team success?
According to Stroll, who is spending many millions on bringing in Newey, it is the car. According to Ferrari, which wouldn't meet Newey's requirements but has hired Lewis Hamilton, it is the driver.
Only time will tell who made the right decision.
