Why Horner sees history repeating itself for Newey at Aston Martin

Although Aston Martin's difficult start under Formula 1’s new regulations is largely linked to Honda's struggles on the power unit side, Adrian Newey has openly acknowledged that things have not gone to plan on the chassis side either.

Partly because of his own late start and the wait for Aston Martin's new wind tunnel to become fully operational, the legendary designer says he has constantly been playing “catch-up”. This led to a major revamp of the AMR26 in Hungary, which helped Fernando Alonso secure points finishes at Zandvoort and Sepang, although Aston Martin's season as a whole is beyond saving.

For former Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, it brings back memories of Newey's early days in Milton Keynes. Horner managed to persuade Newey to make the move – working alongside Dietrich Mateschitz and David Coulthard, who knew Newey well from McLaren.

It was a statement of intent and meant that Red Bull, previously regarded as F1’s party team, began to be taken much more seriously in the paddock. Behind the scenes, however, Horner says it was not immediately a resounding success.

"There was a pushback when I recruited Adrian and convinced him to come," Horner told Autosport. "There was a feeling, certainly within the old guard of the former Jaguar group, 'well, Adrian's going to have to fit into our way of working'. And I thought, 'no, you're going to have to fit in with his way of working'.

"As far as I was concerned Adrian had won over 100 races at that time, and Jaguar had won none. So I was going to lean into Adrian and build the group around what he felt was required and what he needed to get the most out of him."

Newey persuaded only Peter Prodromou to join him from McLaren, meaning the technical team under his leadership largely had to be built from scratch. Newey and Horner did so by bringing in people such as Mark Smith, Geoff Willis and Rob Marshall, who, incidentally, now plays a key role at McLaren alongside Prodromou.

The technical team under Newey gradually took shape, but according to Horner, the other conditions required for success were not yet in place at Red Bull.

"We started to assemble a team and build strength and depth in the technical group, but it was like Adrian had arrived from the moon,” Horner laughed.

"Because what he was pushing for, as an organisation we were just ill-equipped and too immature to be able to deliver. Our tools weren't sophisticated enough and our manufacturing processes weren't far enough advanced.

"He wanted a seamless-shift gearbox in that first year because it would bring tenths of a second per lap, but we could do about four laps before it would blow up! We didn't have a gearbox dyno and we didn't have so many of the different rigs that were required.

"So, that first year in 2007, we just weren't ready for him and as a result the car had all kinds of issues: reliability issues, suspension issues, gearbox issues, electrical issues. Simply because he was uncompromising in what he wanted."

David Coulthard at the Nurburgring in 2007

Photo by: Rainer Schlegelmilch / Getty Images

That is precisely what Horner now sees at Aston Martin, where the team has also had to adapt to Newey's unique way of working and where – despite Newey describing the current facilities in Silverstone as the “best in the business” – not everything was up to the required standard when he arrived.

"Well, it feels like, from the outside looking, it's just history repeating itself", Horner said. "He's obviously gone to Aston and ought to work in the manner that he's used to. And they've obviously not been ready or equipped for that, so he's no doubt in the process of trying to structure that."

Newey arrived at Red Bull after Guenther Steiner had served a stint as its technical operations director, about which Horner shared an amusing anecdote in his conversation with Autosport.

"When I arrived at Red Bull, they said we've employed this guy that Niki Lauda had recommended, he used to be at Jaguar, his name's Guenther Steiner," Horner recalled.

"I'd never heard of him and when I looked him up on the internet he looked fairly scary, that was my first impression, and then Guenther turned up. He was then responsible for the RB2, the Ferrari powered car that overheated in about three degrees at Silverstone on a shakedown.

"Adrian Newey turned up shortly afterwards and said ‘well, we'll forget about that car’. Then Guenther went off within the Red Bull world to work on the NASCAR project that was just getting going and that was his sort of transition into the American world."

Christian Horner and Guenther Steiner in 2005

Photo by: Red Bull Racing

Newey himself was highly motivated to prove a point at the time. Although McLaren wasn’t happy about his departure, the team did not take Red Bull seriously at all back then, meaning it was considered the least damaging destination for him to join. That only fuelled Newey's motivation to prove them wrong.

"I'm sure there was an element of that," Horner confirmed.

"And I think he liked the ethos of Red Bull from what I'd shown him and described to him. For him, it felt like going back to a smaller team that was a pure race team."

Ironically, almost 19 years later, that same factor also played a part in Newey's departure from Red Bull. The designer no longer felt at home in the political hornets' nest that Red Bull had become, something Horner himself discusses critically in his book Drive, which is due to be published on 22 October.

Among other things, Horner says he only learned of Newey's departure indirectly, through others, and admitted that he was disappointed by that.