{"id":318815,"date":"2025-11-30T15:36:13","date_gmt":"2025-11-30T15:36:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/318815\/"},"modified":"2025-11-30T15:36:13","modified_gmt":"2025-11-30T15:36:13","slug":"christian-horner-comments-resurface-after-adrian-newey-lands-new-aston-martin-role","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/318815\/","title":{"rendered":"Christian Horner comments resurface after Adrian Newey lands new Aston Martin role"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adrian Newey\u2019s former team principal at Red Bull, Christian Horner, once claimed that Newey \u201cmanaging a bunch of people\u201d would be \u201cchaos\u201d, and that even the design legend would accept that.<\/p>\n

But five years on from that comment, Newey will be doing just that as he steps into the team principal role at Aston Martin, replacing Andy Cowell next season.<\/p>\n

Adrian Newey will be managing a whole bunch of people next year<\/p>\n

Aston Martin<\/a> announced this week that the team will operate under a new leadership structure next year as design guru Newey has been named team principal, while current incumbent Cowell will move into the new role of chief strategy officer.<\/p>\n

It means Newey will combine the team boss job with the managing technical partner role he has held since joining the team in March after his gardening leave following his Red Bull exit.<\/p>\n

Aston Martin said in its announcement that Newey and Cowell had \u201cagreed to divide their responsibilities in order to focus on their individual strengths and expertise, ensuring organisational efficiency\u201d.<\/p>\n

More on Aston Martin\u2019s team principal announcement<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49 Adrian Newey becomes new Aston Martin team principal in Cowell role change<\/a><\/p>\n

\ud83d\udc49 Stroll explains why he made Adrian Newey new Aston Martin team principal<\/a><\/p>\n

But is the job of team principal suited to Newey\u2019s \u201cindividual strengths and expertise\u201d?<\/p>\n

His former Red Bull team boss Horner warned that it may not be back in 2021.<\/p>\n

Speaking on the High Performance podcast, the Briton explained that with each individual within the Red Bull organisation, the team had to \u201cbuild an environment around them that enables them to focus on what they\u2019re good at.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s like Adrian,\u201d he continued.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdrian is an artist. There\u2019s no point Adrian managing a bunch of people because it\u2019d be chaos. He would be the first to accept that.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you want to give him the freedom, the freedom as an artist to be creative.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think that\u2019s why he\u2019s been here [with Red Bull] probably twice as long as any other team. In this sport, it\u2019s having that feeling of empowerment and allowing them to do their job without micromanagement.<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody is accountable, everybody\u2019s answerable at some point of time, but it\u2019s a question of you\u2019re here to be an aerodynamicist of whatever function it is. You know what\u2019s expected.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m not an engineer. I don\u2019t have any engineering degrees. I couldn\u2019t tell you how the cars are built, even less so how an engine is built.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s a people business, as most businesses are.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s about getting a group of people together, empowering them, giving them the right direction, removing the obstacles to allow them to do their jobs and focus on their job without being troubled by worrying about what somebody else is doing or what another department is doing.\u201d<\/p>\n

Intriguingly, Horner has been linked to Newey\u2019s team principal job at Aston Martin with speculation that the design guru is a stop-gap until Horner completes his gardening leave from Red Bull.<\/p>\n

As part of his Red Bull exit, it is understood Horner negotiated an early release in exchange for a payout of around $100 million that would allow him to return to the paddock after the first half of F1 2026.<\/p>\n

The Briton has been linked to Aston Martin almost from the get-go after his Red Bull exit.<\/p>\n

Read next: Is Adrian Newey a Christian Horner stop-gap at Aston Martin?<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Adrian Newey\u2019s former team principal at Red Bull, Christian Horner, once claimed that Newey \u201cmanaging a bunch of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":318816,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[2074,2495,64,63,1199,818,806,805,803,804,44,17165,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-318815","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-adrian-newey","9":"tag-aston-martin","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-christian-horner","13":"tag-home-page","14":"tag-motor","15":"tag-motor-sports","16":"tag-motosport","17":"tag-motosports","18":"tag-news","19":"tag-popular","20":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318815","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=318815"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/318815\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/318816"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=318815"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=318815"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=318815"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}