David Coulthard has described Aston Martin giving Adrian Newey the team principal role as an \u201cown goal\u201d, and believes it was “never going to work”.<\/p>\n
Newey became the fourth different team principal of Aston Martin<\/a> in five years, taking over the role after former Mercedes<\/a> High Performance Powertrains boss Andy Cowell was shifted aside to become chief strategy officer.<\/p>\n Newey is regarded as one of the greatest designers in F1 history, with his cars having taken 14 drivers\u2019 and 12 constructors\u2019 titles, most recently in 2024 with Max Verstappen<\/a> at Red Bull<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Newey has rarely been thrust into the spotlight, and nor has he sought to be, which meant that more than a few eyebrows were raised when he was announced in the lead role at Aston Martin.<\/p>\n Among those confused by this, was Coulthard<\/a>, who had worked alongside Newey at Williams<\/a>, McLaren<\/a> and Red Bull.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n \u201cI, having spent most of my career working with Adrian, would never have seen him as a team principal,\u201d said Coulthard on the Up to Speed podcast.<\/p>\n \u201cHe is technically driven, he\u2019s a racer, he is a problem solver from a technical point of view.<\/p>\n \u201cThe politics of Formula 1, which is what the team principal has to deal with a lot, and the politics which are sometimes created with the media as well, is not at all; and especially at Adrian\u2019s stage of life in his 60s. You\u2019ll find as you go through the decades, there are certain things that you\u2019re prepared to do that you\u2019re not prepared to do as you get a bit older, because you\u2019ve got less runway ahead than behind.\u201d<\/p>\n Speculation quickly grew in March that Newey was not long for the role, with then-Audi team principal Jonathan Wheatley linked with a move. Not long after the rumours built, Audi confirmed that Wheatley had left the team for personal reasons, \u201cwith immediate effect\u201d.<\/p>\n Three weeks on, and short of owner Lawrence Stroll issuing a rare statement, clarifying that the team does not run with a traditional team principal role, the leadership of Aston Martin remains a point of discussion.<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Article continues below ADVERTISEMENT<\/p>\n Addressing Stroll\u2019s statement, Coulthard added: \u201cThat is a long term play, so I\u2019m curious beyond the statement that we got from Lawrence Stroll that was reaffirming that Adrian is a partner in the team, he\u2019s got a shareholding and they\u2019re going forward together with the original plan, I think it\u2019s just a readdressing of what was a short-term, and actually, what has turned out to be a bit of a PR own goal, because it created a scenario of questioning from the majority of people who were questioning, \u2018does that really work?\u2019.<\/p>\n \u201cNow, it\u2019s kind of like, as we thought, it was never going to work.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Subscribe to our F1 Newsletter<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"David Coulthard has described Aston Martin giving Adrian Newey the team principal role as an \u201cown goal\u201d, and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":561807,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[10968,2495,64,63,874,817,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-632335","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-motosport","8":"tag-10968","9":"tag-aston-martin","10":"tag-au","11":"tag-australia","12":"tag-david-coulthard","13":"tag-f1","14":"tag-motor","15":"tag-motor-sports","16":"tag-motosport","17":"tag-motosports","18":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632335","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=632335"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/632335\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/561807"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=632335"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=632335"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=632335"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}