Zak Brown makes Adrian Newey claim as Red Bull pinpoint RB20 problems

Adrian Newey seems poised to take his trusty notebook to Aston Martin

Zak Brown believes Red Bull have to be missing Adrian Newey as the team searches for a fix for their unbalanced RB20.

Red Bull announced back in May that Newey would be leaving the team within the first quarter of 2025 but until then would be taking a step from their Formula 1 operations.

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Although he has been present at a few Grands Prix with his notebook in hand, his last visit to the grid was back in July’s British Grand Prix, one weekend before Red Bull introduced their Hungarian GP upgrade.

Putting a new floor amongst other parts on the car at Budapest, Max Verstappen labelled the upgrades “not good enough” as he failed to win his third race in a row. That streak now sits at six and with only two podiums in the mix.

Such has been Red Bull’s troubles with an RB20 that the World Champion described as “undriveable”, Verstappen finished Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix 38s down on race winner Charles Leclerc and lost ground to Lando Norris in the Drivers’ standings.

Facing the genuine prospect of losing both championships to McLaren, who are just eight points behind in the teams’ standings, former F1 driver turned Sky F1 pundit Nico Rosberg asked McLaren chief Brown about Red Bull’s form.

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Questioning whether they are “destabilised” at the moment, the 2016 World Champion added: “They really seem to have lost their mojo out there.

“And you say you’re receiving tons of CVs going across your table all the time from that team. We’ve seen some high-profile people leave the team.”

Not only is Newey on his way out of the door, but so too is long-time sporting manager Jonathan Wheatley who is joining Audi while Rob Marshal joined McLaren in January.

Brown replied: “You know, ultimately, I don’t know what’s going on in there, but I think Adrian Newey, I bet it’d be nice to have him around the conference room table right now looking at how to improve the car,” he said.

“Obviously Jonathan Wheatley still there, but you know, he’s moving on, and Rob Marshall has joined us.

“So you’ve got three of the most senior people that were at Red Bull, huge contributors. That can’t not be a loss.

“We all have bad pit stops, but it does seem to be that things are a bit more destabilised than they’ve certainly been recently.”

But while Red Bull motorsport boss Helmut Marko admits Newey’s input would’ve been a help, he insists Red Bull have a team that’s capable of finding the solutions.

“Newey is no longer fully involved in the process,” the Austrian told Sky Sports Germany. “That is a factor we have to look at, but we have a broad base.

“It’s true that his experience and knowledge could certainly have helped in this situation.”

Newey is predicted to join Aston Martin with an announcement in the coming days.

It had Rosberg joking with Brown that the 65-year-old is no longer accepting his calls.

Laughing, Brown replied: “He always return to my calls. We’re good friends, we go historic racing but I’m very happy with the racing team that we have.”

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