Adrian Newey addresses Red Bull's sudden drop in performance aligning with his exit

Adrian Newey was questioned about Red Bull's drastic drop in performance on track recently, and the former ace engineer said he had no idea why the team was struggling this much. Newey said he has not been too involved in the F1 side of things since April and hence does not know what to make of Red Bull's sudden drop in performance.

The Austrian team entered the 2024 F1 season with a more radical evolution of the 2023 challenger. The car looked visibly quite different from the previous season and Adrian Newey had attributed to the fact that the team needed to be aggressive to make gains in the current concept. The season started brilliantly for Red Bull as well.

Max Verstappen cruised to wins in 3 of the first 4 races, with many claiming a repeat of 2023, where Red Bull won all but one race. Things however started to change when McLaren introduced its first major upgrade in Miami and closed the gap to the front; in contrast to Red Bull, who are going through a slump in performances and results.

So much so that in the previous race at Monza, the Austrian team had the 4th fastest car. Adrian Newey was questioned about this drop in performance suffered by the team since his departure, to which the ace engineer opted not to comment and claimed that he had no idea what was going on with the team. Talking about how he has not been working on the project since April, Newey said (via "PlanetF1"):

“I have heard it. I have to be honest, I don’t really read the press for a kind of personal reason going back to my Leyton House days, but the reality is, I can’t comment," Newey said.

“I really can’t comment because once I’m out, I’m out, and so that means I haven’t been able to contribute to the development of the car since April. But why the team is being less competitive recently? I don’t know, because I’m not involved,” he added.

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Adrian Newey talks about his current dynamics at Red Bull

Adrian Newey said that in the current situation, he was on a 'semi-gardening leave' and was not actively involved in anything relating to the race team. Instead, his focus was on the hypercar Red Bull RB17 and he'd continue to work on it before moving to Aston Martin next season.

Newey said (via the aforementioned source):

“I’m in this sort of slightly odd period of semi-garden leave at the moment, in as much as the last time I was involved with the Formula 1 car here was up to and including the Suzuka race weekend at the end of April,” he said

“Since then, I’ve been out of Formula 1, but have been concentrating my efforts on the RB17 track car. So I’ll continue to be working on the 17 through until the first of March, and then the second of March, I will change my location,” Newey added.

Adrian Newey was part of Red Bull for close to two decades, during which he has 7 driver titles and 6 constructor titles.