Newey and the three noes to Ferrari
Beyond the poor start with Aston Martin, Adrian Newey is considered one of the legends of the paddock. In the Briton’s “palmares” is the signature on some of the most iconic cars in the history of motorsport: among these, no Ferrari, a team that the designer has never joined although he was close to arriving in Maranello on three occasions: one in the nineties, another in 2014 and the last one shortly before signing for Lawrence Stroll’s team.
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Newey’s first “no” to the Scuderia came in 1993, when Jean Todt‘s era as general manager of Ferrari began. To immediately give the team a turnaround, the Frenchman tried to convince Newey, who had just designed the prodigious Williams FW15, dominant in the championship with Alain Prost at the wheel. More than 30 years later, Todt explained why Newey did not go to Ferrari.
Todt’s words
“We knew that to have a winning team we had to choose the best mechanics, the best engineers and the best partners. I remember that we had considered Adrian Newey, and that there had been a discussion. He didn’t want to come to Italy“, this was Todt’s comment on the High Performance podcast.
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Todt “consoled” himself in 1997 by taking Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne from Benetton: “I have always respected Rory a lot, I already wanted him when I was managing the Peugeot Sport Cars program, but he wanted to stay in Formula 1. And Ross was a reference point, a technical director. They didn’t know I was negotiating with both. I remember that after hiring them I said: ‘Listen, now you can tell each other that you have signed’. Ross replied: ‘Ok, I’ll invite him for a beer tomorrow’“.
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