Over 20 years ago, when Adrian Newey worked at McLaren, a story went around the Formula 1 paddock that he had effectively locked himself in his office with his drawing board. Once he’d finished sketching a design, went the gossip, he pushed it through a letterbox for collection by aero chief Peter Prodromou, whose job it was to ensure the various design offices turned the sketch into competitive reality.
This may or may not be the work of idle tittle-tattle, but it’s a mark of Newey’s reputation that people were willing to give credence to a story that framed him like the mad old lady in the attic in a Victorian novel. Fourteen drivers’-championship-winning cars started life on his famous drawing board, plus at least 10 that fell just short, and yet he is notoriously publicity-shy.
Like many creative people, he needs the right environment to thrive. In his own autobiography he describes a fight with former McLaren boss over the color of his office walls. Newey felt the mandatory battleship grey was oppressive and stifling, so he repainted it himself in duck-egg blue – to Dennis’s horror and fury. When McLaren moved to its present home, a bespoke steel-and-glass edifice just outside Woking, Newey loathed its sterility (and Dennis’s clear-desk policy) so much he couldn’t wait to leave.
For all these reasons – along with the rancorous circumstances of his departure from Red Bull last year – Newey’s arrival at Aston Martin has been the subject of feverish interest. For most people, when starting a new job the first orders of business are simple: try to remember everybody’s name, don’t move anybody’s cheese in the office fridge, don’t park in somebody else’s space, and absolutely don’t click “reply to all”.
Such is Newey’s status, though, that no sooner had he collected his staff pass last Monday morning than he was whisked off on a tour of the site by CEO Andy Cowell and team owner Lawrence Stroll.
Aston Martin moved into its new $250million factory – sorry, ‘technology campus’ – last year, the Monday after the Monaco Grand Prix. Not that the team had very far to go because two of the new buildings were built on either side of the old one, which was then dynamited to make way for a third new edifice housing a gym and the staff restaurant in which Newey can look forward to convivial luncheons with his fellow bigwigs.
At 400,000 square feet, the combined footprint of the buildings on campus actually comes up smaller than rivals Mercedes (646,000 sq ft) and Red Bull (700,000 sq ft). But, hey, size isn’t everything – and the campus includes 775,000 sq ft of wildflower meadow, 1500 freshly planted trees, and a walking/cycling track that’s a scale replica of the nearby Silverstone Grand Prix circuit. Oh, and a helipad for when the owner flies in.
The extra land was acquired from a nearby farm. Having sold it, the farmer immediately filed objections to Aston Martin’s plans to build on it, thus torpedoing any chances of getting a discount on a Vantage. We imagine Stroll must have chuckled into his morning coffee when the new UK government announced plans to hit farmers with inheritance tax.
Among Newey’s first stops was the on-site wind tunnel, a state-of-the-art facility that has only been open since January this year. Until then, Aston Martin had been renting time in the Mercedes F1 tunnel just up the road, in Brackley.
Newey then sat in on a series of meetings, including a discussion of the 2026 car concept. This is likely to be his focus moving forward since, historically, Newey sees little value in sinking time into curing the shortcomings of somebody else’s car (obviously this may change if the guy signing the checks starts making unhappy noises about current performance).
The team tells us that Newey left the office “loaded up with documents, reports and memos to read that evening at home”. Hopefully, unlike Donald Trump at Mar-a-Lago, he didn’t leave these lying around in the bathroom.
This is another insight into Newey’s working habits: he’s neither a 9-5 man nor an ostentatious exponent of presenteeism. One of the contributing factors to the breakdown of his relationship with Red Bull was team boss Christian Horner telling reporters that Newey only works three days a week.
Maybe Newey was in the office three days a week, but his creative brain is never off: if an idea comes to him at 4am he’ll be at his drawing board within minutes. He rates his productivity on a scale of fractions of a second lopped off lap time rather than hours logged behind a desk.
Speaking of the tool of the trade, Aston informs us that “the iconic drawing board is in place” and that it has dressed Newey’s office “in the Aston Martin style”. Presumably not duck-egg blue given that green is the corporate palette.
Besides engaging with Cowell, the recently appointed CEO and team principal, Newey has spent much of his first week meeting with senior engineering heads. While Enrico Cardile, somewhat controversially, is yet to emerge from gardening leave after handing in his notice from Ferrari, and technical director Dan Fallows was ousted in a restructure late last year, Aston Martin has plenty of people with experience at its top table. Engineering director Luca Furbatto has had senior roles at McLaren and Sauber, deputy technical director Eric Blandin has been head of aerodynamics at Ferrari and Mercedes, and executive director Bob Bell was responsible for the aerodynamics of some of the most successful McLaren F1 cars of the 1980s.
Lunching at the on-site restaurant must be a peculiar experience for Bell, since he spent two years in the late 1990s working in the building which formerly occupied that site. Perhaps he’s been regaling Newey with tales of the race-winning Jordan 199 he engineered where the canteen now stands – or maybe Newey has been bending Bell’s ear about the decor in his office.
We’ll find out - especially if he’s seen sneaking in under cover of darkness with paint rollers under his arm rather than blueprints, along with several pots of vinyl matt…
