SILVERSTONE, England (AP) — Formula 1's most influential car designer, Adrian Newey, is joining Aston Martin in March 2025 after leaving Red Bull, ending months of speculation over a backroom figure who seemed more in-demand than any driver.
Newey has spent nearly two decades with Red Bull and is widely credited with putting the team on its path to dominance in F1. On Tuesday, Aston Martin confirmed he's joining a team that has big ambitions to challenge for the title and the backing of billionaire Lawrence Stroll — but no race wins yet.
Newey will arrive in his new role as “managing technical partner” in time to help shape how Aston Martin responds to the new F1 car regulations coming for 2026. He'll also be made a shareholder in the team.
Newey said he and Stroll got to know each other while training in the gym during F1 race weekends in Asia. Newey visited Aston Martin's new headquarters in June as Stroll closed in on a signing which the Canadian billionaire called “another demonstration of our ambition to build a Formula 1 team capable of fighting for world championships.”
“You have to be honest with yourself and you have to keep yourself fresh and so I felt I needed a new challenge,” Newey said.
He added that Stroll's hands-on approach as an owner was an “old-school model” that reminded him of his old bosses at teams like Williams and McLaren, which both won titles with Newey-designed cars in the 1990s.
“I was very flattered to have a lot of approaches from various teams, but really, Lawrence’s passion and commitment and enthusiasm is very endearing, it’s very persuasive.”
Stroll didn't comment on the details of a pay package which reportedly rivals those of F1's top drivers.
“I can tell you, Adrian is a bargain,” he said. “We intend to be around here a very long time together, so it’s relatively inexpensive for everything Adrian brings in the partnership we will have.”
The last time the regulations had a big change, with the return of “ground effect” aerodynamics for 2022, it was Newey's Red Bull that dominated as Max Verstappen won the championship. Newey had a lifetime of experience to draw on, having written his university thesis on ground effect in the 1980s, back when it was previously used in F1.
Aston Martin's drivers are Fernando Alonso, the two-time champion and Lance Stroll, the son of team owner Lawrence Stroll. Newey said he'd known Lance Stroll from his teenage years competing against Newey's son in Formula 3, and said Alonso seemed like “a kind of archenemy at times” when he was challenging for wins against Newey's previous employers.
While Newey looks to the 2026 design, Aston Martin will aim to stop a slide in its performance. Alonso had eight podium finishes last year for a team that seemed on the up, but neither driver has finished higher than fifth in 2024.
Newey joined Red Bull in 2006 and helped the team win seven drivers’ titles — including the last three seasons with Verstappen — and six constructors’ titles.
Red Bull said in May that its chief technical officer would be stepping back from F1 design and focus on a production car, the RB17, before leaving in the first quarter of 2025.
The announcement comes ahead of this week's Azerbaijan Grand Prix, and at a time when Red Bull’s dominance of F1 seems to be slipping.
Max Verstappen — who recently called his Red Bull car a “monster” — and his teammate Sergio Perez have not won any of the last six races, the team’s longest drought since 2020, while McLaren and Mercedes now seem to have faster cars.
Newey’s departure is also part of a broader exodus of senior Red Bull staff in a season which began amid legal turmoil when team principal Christian Horner was accused of misconduct by an employee. Red Bull’s parent company dismissed a complaint against Horner and an appeal was dismissed last month.
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FILE -Red Bull technical director Adrian Newey arrives ahead the third free practice, at the Monaco racetrack, in Monaco, May 25, 2024. (AP Photo/Luca Bruno, File)
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Monday directing the United States to again withdraw from the landmark Paris climate agreement, dealing a blow to worldwide efforts to combat global warming and once again distancing the U.S. from its closest allies.
Trump's action, hours after he was sworn in to a second term, echoed his directive in 2017, when he announced that the U.S. would abandon the global Paris accord. The pact is aimed at limiting long-term global warming to 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit (1.5 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels or, failing that, keeping temperatures at least well below 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit (2 degrees Celsius) above pre-industrial levels.
Trump also signed a letter to the United Nations indicating his intention to withdraw from the 2015 agreement, which allows nations to provide targets to cut their own emissions of greenhouse gases from the burning of coal, oil and natural gas. Those targets are supposed to become more stringent over time, with countries facing a February 2025 deadline for new individual plans. The outgoing Biden administration last month offered a plan to cut U.S. greenhouse gas emissions by more than 60% by 2035.
Trump's order says the Paris accord is among a number of international agreements that don't reflect U.S. values and “steer American taxpayer dollars to countries that do not require, or merit, financial assistance in the interests of the American people."
Instead of joining a global agreement, “the United States’ successful track record of advancing both economic and environmental objectives should be a model for other countries,'' Trump said.
Laurence Tubiana, CEO of the European Climate Foundation and a key architect of the Paris accord, called the planned U.S. withdrawal unfortunate but said action to slow climate change “is stronger than any single country’s politics and policies."
The global context for Trump's action is “very different to 2017,'' Tubiana said Monday, adding that “there is unstoppable economic momentum behind the global transition, which the U.S has gained from and led but now risks forfeiting."
The International Energy Agency expects the global market for key clean energy technologies to triple to more than $2 trillion by 2035, she said.
“The impacts of the climate crisis are also worsening. The terrible wildfires in Los Angeles are the latest reminder that Americans, like everyone else, are affected by worsening climate change,” Tubiana said.
Gina McCarthy, who served as White House climate adviser under President Joe Biden, a Democrat, said that if Trump, a Republican, “truly wants America to lead the global economy, become energy independent and create good-paying American jobs," then he must “stay focused on growing our clean energy industry. Clean technologies are driving down energy costs for people all across our country."
The world is now long-term 2.3 degrees Fahrenheit (1.3 degrees Celsius) above mid-1800s temperatures. Most but not all climate monitoring agencies said global temperatures last year passed the warming mark of 2.7 degrees Fahrenheit, and all said it was the warmest year on record.
The withdrawal process from the Paris accord takes one year. Trump’s previous withdrawal took effect the day after the 2020 presidential election, which he lost to Biden.
While the first Trump-led withdrawal from the landmark U.N. agreement — adopted by 196 nations — shocked and angered nations across the globe, “not a single country followed the U.S. out the door,” said Alden Meyer, a longtime climate negotiations analyst with the European think tank E3G.
Instead, other nations renewed their commitment to slowing climate change, along with investors, businesses, governors, mayors and others in the U.S., Meyer and other experts said.
Still, they lamented the loss of U.S. leadership in global efforts to slow climate change, even as the world is on track to set yet another record hot year and has been lurching from drought to hurricane to flood to wildfire.
“Clearly America is not going to play the commanding role in helping solve the climate crisis, the greatest dilemma humans have ever encountered,″ said climate activist and writer Bill McKibben. “For the next few years the best we can hope is that Washington won’t manage to wreck the efforts of others.”
About half of Americans “somewhat” or “strongly” oppose U.S. action to withdraw from the climate accord, and even Republicans aren’t overwhelmingly in favor, according according to a poll from The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research. Only about 2 in 10 U.S. adults “somewhat” or “strongly” in favor of withdrawing from the Paris agreement, while about one-quarter are neutral.
Much of the opposition to U.S. withdrawal comes from Democrats, but Republicans display some ambivalence as well. Slightly less than half of Republicans are in favor of withdrawing from the climate accord, while about 2 in 10 are opposed.
China several years ago passed the United States as the world's largest annual carbon dioxide emitting nation. The U.S. — the second biggest annual carbon polluting country — put 4.9 billion metric tons of carbon dioxide in the air in 2023, down 11% from a decade earlier, according to the scientists who track emissions for the Global Carbon Project.
But carbon dioxide lasts in the atmosphere for centuries, so the United States has put more of the heat-trapping gas that is now in the air than any other nation. The U.S. is responsible for nearly 22% of the carbon dioxide put in the atmosphere since 1950, according to Global Carbon Project.
While global efforts to fight climate change continued during Trump's first term, many experts worry that a second Trump term will be more damaging, with the United States withdrawing even further from climate efforts in a way that could cripple future presidents’ efforts. With Trump, who has dismissed climate change, in charge of the world’s leading economy, those experts fear other countries, especially China, could use it as an excuse to ease off their own efforts to curb carbon emissions.
Simon Stiell, the U.N. climate change executive secretary, held out hope that the U.S. would continue to embrace the global clean energy boom.
“Ignoring it only sends all that vast wealth to competitor economies, while climate disasters like droughts, wildfires and superstorms keep getting worse," Stiell said. “The door remains open to the Paris Agreement, and we welcome constructive engagement from any and all countries.”
Associated Press writer Linley Sanders contributed to this report.
The Associated Press’ climate and environmental coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. The AP is solely responsible for all content. Find the AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org.
AES Indiana Petersburg Generating Station, a coal-fired power plant, operates in Petersburg, Ind., on Wednesday, Oct. 25, 2023. (AP Photo/Joshua A. Bickel)
FILE - Wind turbines stretch across the horizon at dusk at the Spearville Wind Farm, Sept. 29, 2024, near Spearville, Kan. (AP Photo/Charlie Riedel, File)
President Donald Trump gestures during the 60th Presidential Inauguration in the Rotunda of the U.S. Capitol in Washington, Monday, Jan. 20, 2025. (AP Photo/Julia Demaree Nikhinson, Pool)