Häkkinen: Incredible that Newey leaves Red Bull at this time

After a 20-year 'marriage', Newey and Red Bull confirmed this week, ahead of the Miami Grand Prix weekend that the Super Designer is to step down as technical boss, immediately triggering speculation he will be joining Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari, in the future.

While the Ferrari move is yet to be confirmed (reports from Italy suggest it will be made official after Miami GP). The news is of such stature it is all but drowning the build-up to Round 6, where Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez start firm favourites in the Newey & Co., designed almighty RB20. A worthy successor to the almost all-conquering RB19 of last year.

This dominant era RBR find themselves in and the fact that Newey has been with Red Bull since almost the beginning of the Dietrich Mateschitz dream journey. The 65-year-old Briton, whose cars also won F1 world titles for Williams and McLaren.

In fact, Hakkinen's two F1 titles were won in Newey-designed McLarens and the F1 legend reacted to the news: "A very big move for him personally, but also for the Red Bull team and Formula 1 too.

"Remember, this is the man who has brought championship-winning success to Williams, McLaren and Red Bull Racing through his design genius, so his decision to leave is significant," Häkkinen declared in his latest Unibet column.

The timing is also astounding as Red Bull is in the throes of another spell of dominance, and is sure to destabilise the team, perhaps not in the short-term but certainly not the long-term as Newey leaves a massive hole in the team's top-tier management.

Hakkinen continued: "It is incredible that Adrian has decided to leave the team when we are only a quarter of the way through the 2024 season and at a time when his RB20 car is completely dominating the World Championship with Max Verstappen.

"He is going to continue working on Red Bull’s hypercar road car project - the RB17 - until early 2025, but the news that he is going to stop working on the F1 car is important for at least three reasons.

"First is the impact on the team if key personnel design to follow him, whether due to the politics inside the team or if they discover that Adrian is going to another team such as Ferrari.

"The second is whether the remaining team feels destabilised by these events. When a team loses its captain someone else needs to fill that role immediately, otherwise you have confusion.

"Finally, we have to watch the effect this has on World Champion Max Verstappen. While this year’s car is not going to become less competitive, and the 2025 car is likely to be an evolution, the 2026 car will be built under a completely new set of regulations."

"Adrian will have already started to conceive that design, but he won’t be around to finalise or deliver it, and more worrying for Max is the prospect of Adrian working for another team by this time next year," ventured the 1998 and 1999 F1 World Champion.

Häkkinen looked back on his own career in the top flight: "I won both my Formula 1 World Championship titles in Adrian Newey-designed cars, the McLaren MP4/13 and MP/14 giving me the performance to win 13 Grands Prix. With the MP4/13 me and teammate David Coulthard were able to win the 1998 Constructors’ World Championship - the last time McLaren achieved that goal.

"Adrian was not on his own back then, with designers including Neil Oatley, Steve Nichols and Henri Durand being part of the overall design team.

"The fact is that Adrian was the guy giving overall technical direction to the team, and when he joined Red Bull Racing at the end of the team’s first season in F1 he shaped the team’s evolution and its fantastic success between 2010-2013," recalled Hakkinen.