The most successful designer in the sport’s history, Newey is the figurehead of Red Bull’s technical department.
He’s been with the team since 2005 and has designed every race- and championship-winning car throughout its history.
That follows similarly successful stints with McLaren and Williams, where he netted titles with Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost, Damon Hill, Jacques Villeneuve, and Mika Hakkinen.
Newey’s name has now been dragged into the apparent power struggle between Horner and Helmut Marko.
Germany’s Auto Motor und Sport has reported that the team principal is considering moving Newey away from the squad’s Formula 1 programme.
It’s claimed the design legend would be moved to the RB17 hypercar project full-time.
Newey is already involved in the car’s design, which is scheduled to begin production next year.
“The RB17 distils everything we know about creating championship-winning Formula 1 cars into a package that delivers extreme levels of performance in a two-seat track car,” Newey said in a media statement.
“Driven by our passion for performance at every level, the RB17 pushes design and technical boundaries far beyond what has been previously available to enthusiasts and collectors.”
It’s suggested that having Newey focus exclusively on that project would be a way to isolate the 65-year-old from the current turmoil involving Horner, Marko, and Max Verstappen.
There currently appear two factions within Red Bull Racing, with Horner seemingly alone in one and Marko and Verstappen in the other.
In Saudi Arabia, Marko revealed he could be suspended following that weekend’s race, which prompted Verstappen to speak out in strong support of the 80-year-old.
Where Newey’s allegiances sat have been less clear. However, he has reportedly pledged his loyalty to the team over Horner and suggests he’s in the Marko-Verstappen camp, a point the AMuS report serves only to underline.
Along with Verstappen, Newey is a star asset for Red Bull Racing.
While there is a team that supports him, and the success of the organisation isn’t entirely his doing, there is a strong correlation between Newey and success.
Rivals are naturally interested in acquiring his services, with Ferrari known to have made at least two approaches over the years.
The most serious of those came in 2014 after Red Bull Racing had won four titles in succession with Sebastian Vettel.
Then, Horner convinced Newey to remain with the lure of designing a road car.
“Ferrari came hard for him,” Horner said of Ferrari’s 2014 approach.
“They promised him the world. You can have a Hollywood lifestyle, fly into the factory from Monaco every day and you won’t pay any tax and you can design a road car and this, that and the other.
“I managed to persuade him to stay by saying: ‘We’ll do a road car. If you want to do a road car, we’ll do a road car.”
Released in 2016, the Aston Martin Valkyrie was conceived by Newey.
With Aston Martin and Red Bull Racing having parted ways (a commercial relationship existed between the two companies), the RB17 project has been brought in-house to Red Bull Advanced Technologies, where Newey is already chief technical officer. It is a passion project for the designer.
There is a degree of logic in transferring him onto the RB17 full-time as, within F1, there are moves to tighten the way staff who work only part-time are accounted for under the cost cap.
That reclassification could see Newey considered a full-time employee of the team, which would have implications under the financial rules and likely require elements elsewhere within the business to be tightened to accommodate him.
The consideration is, therefore, whether the F1 organisation is better investing that resource in Newey or elsewhere.
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