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Aston Martin's prize recruit, Adrian Newey, has made it clear that the only way Max Verstappen joins the Silverstone-based team is if the squad builds the fastest car on the grid. The squad has been one of the dark horses of the grid as Lawrence Stroll has continued to pump enormous resources into the project.
The Canadian billionaire's ambition of turning the project into a success has seen him lure Adrian Newey away from Red Bull. Not only that, the 2026 F1 season would see Aston Martin become a works team with an exclusive Honda contract. When Newey was announced as the latest member, many felt that it was about time that Max Verstappen would find himself at the Silverstone-based squad as well.
The Dutch driver's future is anyway on a sticky wicket, as Red Bull has hit a rough patch. The car is not as dominant as it once was, and McLaren has jumped the Austrian team in the pecking order. At the same time, there have been conversations between Max Verstappen and Toto Wolff about the future.
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In all of this, there were reports of Max Verstappen being offered a billion-dollar contract by Aston Martin early in the year. The reports didn't materialize into anything, but it cannot be denied that the Silverstone-based squad is surely an enticing project. On his first appearance in the team's green colors, Adrian Newey was quite blunt in his assessment when it came to luring the 4x F1 champion.
According to him, it comes down to the squad building a fast car that would attract Verstappen to the team. He told media, including Motorsport,
"Max is clearly a phenomenal talent, and he's a supreme competitor, and part of that means that Max likes to break things down to a simple common equation, if you like,"
He added,
"In this particular case, that's choosing a team that he believes will deliver the fastest car. So, if we're to ever attract Max, the first thing we have to do is make a fast car. There's no point in pipe-dreaming about anything else from now."
Newey of working with Max Verstappen's fellow multiple world champion
Adrian Newey also touched on working with 2x F1 world champion Fernando Alonso at Aston Martin. Newey has often seen Alonso as a rival, and he admitted that working with the Spaniard for the first time is certainly something he wanted to do. Alongside Max Verstappen, only Alonso and Hamilton are the multiple world champions on the grid, and talking about his experience of working with the driver, he said,
"Fernando, he's such a cool character," Newey said. "He's been an enemy for many years along with Lewis [Hamilton], and I think I've said before that you can only work with so many drivers, but two drivers I always felt I would enjoy working with were Lewis and Fernando. I couldn't work with both, so at least I've got one of them."
It would be interesting to see what the future holds for Max Verstappen as Fernando Alonso's contract comes to an end in 2026. Whether the driver wants to continue racing beyond that is going to be an interesting talking point next year.
