Adrian Newey to Ferrari hurdle revealed as new Red Bull target identified – report

Is now the time for Adrian Newey to finally join Ferrari?

Adrian Newey’s request for a group of 20 engineers to join him at Ferrari is behind the “abrupt halt” in negotiations between the two parties, it has been claimed.

Newey announced in May that he will leave Red Bull in early 2025, having played an instrumental role in the team’s success with the likes of Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen since arriving from McLaren in 2006.

Ferrari’s hopes of landing Adrian Newey fading?

Ferrari had been considered strong favourites to sign Newey, with the terms of his Red Bull departure – negotiated by his manager Eddie Jordan, the former F1 team owner – allowing him to start work with another team in 2025, sidestepping the period of gardening leave that is commonplace in F1 contracts.

It was claimed that Fred Vasseur, the Ferrari team principal, travelled to London just days after Newey’s Red Bull exit was made public in an effort to seal the deal.

However, multiple reports over recent weeks have claimed that Ferrari have fallen behind Aston Martin and McLaren in the race to secure Newey’s signature.

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Reports last month claimed Newey paid a visit to Aston Martin’s Silverstone factory after receiving an eye-watering financial proposal from team owner Lawrence Stroll during the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix weekend in March.

It was claimed this week that Ferrari chief executive Benedetto Vigna has baulked at Newey’s salary demands, as well as expressing concerns that the F1 design guru would hold an inordinate amount of power within the team if he made the move to Maranello.

A report by respected Italian publication La Gazzetta dello Sport on Friday has shed more light on the nature of Newey’s requests, with the 65-year-old reportedly asking for as many as 20 prominent engineers to join him in Italy.

While Ferrari are said to be willing to offer Newey a salary of $10million per year in the role of technical supervisor, the team fear an intake of 20 engineers “of some prominence” would “fall heavily” on the Scuderia’s ability to meet F1’s cost cap.

It has been proposed that some of Newey’s lieutenants could be allocated to Ferrari’s World Endurance Championship operation – which last month triumphed in the legendary Le Mans 24 Hours race for the second successive year – to ease those budget cap concerns, but it is said that this solution would not have been “an easy or decisive option.”

Newey’s preference to continue living in the United Kingdom is also considered a hurdle to a potential Ferrari deal, thought it is claimed that the current stalemate is “perhaps not insurmountable.”

With Ferrari’s hopes of landing Newey receding, the same source points to rumours at this weekend’s Hungarian Grand Prix that the Scuderia have turned their attention to Red Bull’s head of aerodynamics Enrico Balbo.

Ferrari are currently searching for a new technical director after Enrico Cardile announced earlier this month that he will join Aston Martin, with Vasseur himself currently overseeing the chassis side on an interim basis.

It is said that the rumours linking Ferrari with Balbo are “scarcely credible” after Red Bull recently tied him, along with technical director Pierre Wache, to a multi-year contract after an approach from the Prancing Horse in 2023.

Balbo and Wache’s decision to pursue a new development direction with Red Bull’s 2024 car, the RB20, is also cited as “one of the causes” behind Newey’s decision to leave the team.

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