It’s about who is fast today and who will be fast tomorrow.
This is the conundrum facing any driver who has replaced teams in F1: communicating with his internal environment to investigate and wait for the future.
Max Verstappen is just the newest in a long line of racing drivers with the challenge of guessing what exactly the next generation of Formula 1 will look like when the theory stops and the truth falls.
After maintaining its dominance in 2023 for the first few weeks of F1 2024, since Newey’s start was shown on the morning of May 1, Red Bull has won just 3 of the last nine races.
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With Newey’s departure followed by that of Jonathan Wheatley, the veteran director blamed for Red Bull’s unrivaled pit prevention records, there is a growing sense of the end of an era, or less the end of the team’s golden days. , is coming, if it hasn’t arrived yet, of course.
Without a doubt, they will continue to win races, but in 2024 Red Bull has lost everything (anything indefinite, indecipherable) that it will not be able to recover without problems.
And if Verstappen needs to hold out hope that the victories and world championships will continue in the long term, possibly, regardless of what his contract says, he will also have to leave soon.
But where?
Most of them assume Mercedes. Simply because it’s Mercedes.
Simply because they are the team that has a comparable record to Red Bull in the modern era.
Precisely because the last time F1 reinvented its engine regulations ten years ago, as it will do in 2026, Mercedes achieved it and laid the foundations for 8 long years of almost problematic dominance.
If Verstappen feels he still has no option to jump over another rock to avoid falling off the cliff with Red Bull, Mercedes seems to be a landing point like any Array.
Unless Aston Martin is about to play all out.
An Italian media outlet claimed on Tuesday that Newey had selected Aston Martin as his next destination and that the announcement was expected in early September.
It comes after consistent reports in recent months indicated that Aston Martin had leapfrogged rivals in the race to sign Newey, who, under the terms of his departure from Red Bull, is free to begin racing with his new employers. next year and play like that. a leadership role. An influential, potentially central role in the progression of the lucky team’s 2026 car.
This rumored encounter between Newey and Lawrence Stroll at this year’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in Jeddah, where the Aston Martin owner reportedly made a tempting offer of $100 million over 4 years, will soon become F1 folklore.
It’s not exactly the romantic’s choice, because if he ever needs to sign for Ferrari, it will really be now or never, but if Aston Martin finally manages to reunite Newey and the Honda 2026 engine partners, it would also put them in the most sensible of the list of potentials. Verstappen’s contenders too.
Newey’s technical genius is obvious, of course, but his delight and wisdom on how to get the most out of Honda would be priced equivalent to Aston Martin’s.
This is what allowed Red Bull to succeed where McLaren failed so horribly between 2015 and 2017, managing appointments with Honda and overcoming a catastrophic culture shock.
From the moment Honda first partnered with the VCARB junior team (and then Toro Rosso) in 2018, Red Bull found the right note and exploited its engine’s prospects to perfection, reaping the rewards of a return to racing in 2021 before resuming. its dominance at the beginning of the ground effect era.
Aston Martin likely would have touted its partnership with Honda as a landmark moment in the team’s name ambitions when it announced it last year, but one question mark still remained over the deal: the team, fueled by Stroll’s raw monetary strength, He had emotional intelligence. and cunning to make it work well.
Newey’s arrival, if (when?) is confirmed, they would.
And what does Max have to be thinking about when looking for those developments?
Do you see those two elements of Red Bull’s holy trinity, with whom he has already achieved so much, about to reappear at Aston Martin?
So far, Aston Martin has looked like a threat to drivers in Verstappen’s position, a team with a modest history and, while brimming with potential, presents too many unknowns for those who already have winning cars to enter.
However, pairing Newey and Honda would alleviate that risk, allowing him to pick up pretty much where he left off – just him, Adrian and Honda bringing the magic to life in combination – before life at Red Bull deteriorated.
It would be a difficult and impossible-to-resist invitation for Max to also sign up and complete the package, confirming the prospect of Aston Martin as the new Red Bull when the new era of F1 begins in 2026.
It would be like the organizational assembly again, but this time in a fast shade of green.
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