Conspiracy Theories Around Red Bull’s Mastermind Leaving for Mercedes Rubbished After Suspicious Activity During Initial Races

Ever since the start of the “ground effect” cars’ era, Red Bull has come out as the team to beat. Yet, no team has come close to matching their pace and challenging them for both championships. Such is their dominance that not only did they not win both titles last year, but also broke several records along the way. That run has continued in 2023 and the gap with the competitors seems to only have increased. The man behind it all? Adrian Newey, the CTO of Red Bull Racing. After years of Mercedes dominance, Newey has tasted success, but a former F1 champion believes he is ready to jump ship to the Silver Arrows. Others have rubbished that claim.

Newey joined the Milton-Keynes team in 2006 from McLaren. Since then, he has helped build every championship-winning car Red Bull has won titles with. May it be the Sebastian Vettel era from 2010 to 2013 or the 2021 and onwards with Max Verstappen. In an interview last year, team boss Christian Horner revealed how he got the enigmatic engineer on his team when his contract negotiations with the Woking team stalled for a while. Since then, the duo has braved good and bad times together.

On speculations of him possibly leaving for Mercedes, Vincenzo Landino on a recent episode of The VF1 Show said, “It sounded like Damon [Hill] was very adamant about the idea that Adrian Newey could go to Mercedes. The quote that I saw from podcast was, ‘I can’t help ignoring this thing he did in Bahrain where he stood in front of the Mercedes on the grid with his clipboard and stood there for a long time looking at their front wings’.”

“Anybody who knows Adrian will go, ‘wait a minute, he’s already got the most dominant car in F1. Why is he looking at the Mercedes front wings?’ Was he really looking at the front wings? Or was he just standing in front of the Mercedes saying, ‘I’m interested’? Is that what he was really saying? In that context, when you say it that way, you see what you want to see. You can make anything up.”

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Newey has earned himself quite the reputation over the years in F1. One that even his team principal cannot deny.

Adrian Newey: “bloke that can see air”

Newey’s reputation in aerodynamics precedes him. There is no team currently on the grid that would not gain from his expertise. The current success anyways makes him a hot property. But surely Horner knows that and would do anything and everything in his capacity to make him stay. If not, stop him from joining any other team.

Last year’s success was underwhelming, to say the least for Horner. The record-breaking feat had him singing praise for his team legendary CTO. Planet F1 quoted him as saying, “Adrian was the very best that’s ever been in Formula 1. It was a question of how could we entice Adrian to join the Red Bull team.”

“the only bloke that can see air. He lives in the matrix,” he concluded.

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Do you think Adrian will betray the team he has stayed with all these years and join their direct rivals?