- Red Bull
Horner relaxed about Newey's America's Cup ambitions
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner is not worried about star designer Adrian Newey leaving his team to pursue a career in the America's Cup any time soon.
Newey has made no secret of his desire to get involved in the design side of sailing and British America's Cup-winning sailor Ben Ainslie recently referenced Newey in an interview when talking about setting up a UK-based team. However, Horner is confident Newey has enough of an incentive to stay on at Red Bull for some time.
"Firstly, Adrian has always expressed an interest in the America's Cup since the McLaren days," he said. "It's something at some distant point in the future it is feasibly something he may get involved with. But he thoroughly enjoys what he is doing at the moment, he is in the halcyon period of his personal career and he enjoys the environment he is working in. It's not just about Adrian, it's about the team of engineers that work with him and support him, without which none of it would be possible. Adrian is always the first to recognise that as well.
"As with anything, I think a contract isn't worth the paper it's written on if the individuals aren't comfortable with each other or don't have the desire to be there. Adrian is very comfortable in the environment at Red Bull and enjoys working with the team, and the team obviously enjoys working with Adrian. I think that will continue for quite some time to come. His motivation is still enormously high, he's still hugely competitive and he's still relatively young. He's far from retirement age and I think he would find it hard to find any challenge that would stimulate him in the way that Formula One does."
Horner said Newey was still instrumental to the team and its success over the last four years.
"He's an enormous part of the team, and the technical team, in many ways, has been built around him to embrace the way that he works and how he operates," he added. "He's quite unique in his functions and describes himself as a dinosaur because he still draws with a pencil on a drawing board. That's probably the only drawing board left in Formula One. The way he interacts with the design engineers and the rest of the aerodynamics department, that's the real key to the success."
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