With Adrian Newey signing a contract extension with Red Bull to remain their chief technical officer, it has been revealed that Mercedes tried to poach the 64-year-old.
Newey, who has designed a plethora of highly competitive and successful machines in F1, has produced 11 constructors championship-winning cars since 1992.
The RB19 might prove to be Newey‘s most dominant creation yet, as the 2023 challenger has won each of the five events ahead of the Emilia Romanga Grand Prix.
Newey is possibly facing the biggest challenge of his career yet as he seeks to retain Red Bull‘s advantage, despite the team being limited to 63 percent of the available hours in the wind tunnel and CFD (Computational Fluid Dynamics) development for breaching cost cap regulations in 2021.
Mercedes try to sign Newey
The devastating speed of Red Bull has left rivals scratching their heads trying to work out why they are so quick.
It has been revealed by F1-insider.com that one admirer of Newey‘s work was Toto Wolff. The Mercedes boss has overseen troubles with the design of their own car the German team delivered underwhelming W13 and W14 packages.
Despite the offer to join Mercedes, Newey elected to remain put and continue his work with Red Bull.
The offer has received jest from Helmut Marko, who mocked that Wolff does not have the confidence in his own team to fix the W14.
Red Bull’s engineers are hot property
Not limited to Mercedes, Red Bull have faced attempts from other teams to lure away their key personnel.
Notably Ferrari, who have reportedly targeted Pierre Wache to fill the void left by Laurent Mekies.
Mekies will depart Maranello to become the team principal of AlphaTauri as Franz Tost retires from the role at the end of 2023.
Dan Fallows was also recently lured away from Red Bull to join Aston Martin and he has contributed to their AMR23, that is often finishing on the podium.
