Christian Horner spills the beans on how Red Bull convinced F1 wizard Adrian Newey to reject Ferrari

Team principal Christian Horner revealed how he convinced Adrian Newey to stay at Red Bull when the latter was "half an hour away" from joining the Italian outfit Ferrari in 2014.

Red Bull's first spell of dominance came to an end after the new engine regulations kicked in, marking the entry of the V6 turbo-hybrid era of the sport. The team's four-time world champion, Sebastian Vettel, made his way to Ferrari for what could have been a powerful team with a powerful engine.

Following him was Adrian Newey, whom Ferrari wanted desperately. Horner revealed on the Eff Won podcast that they were extremely close to signing a deal.

"We went from winning ’10, ’11, ’12, ’13, four on the bounce, and then a massive regulation change to the engine and our engine supplier completely missed the target," Horner said. "And at that point, Vettel leaves because of the engine, Adrian came very close to leaving, he was within about half an hour of signing [for Ferrari]."

However, Horner was able to convince Newey to stay at Red Bull by giving a bold statement towards building a road car. This eventually led to the Aston Martin Valkyrie Project, which has a naturally aspirated 6.5-litre V12 engine, pushing out 160 horsepower. Interestingly, this conversation between the two took place at a pub in England.

Horner stated:

"I managed to persuade him to stay by saying: ‘We’ll do a road car. If you want to do a road car, we’ll do a road car."

"He said, ‘Well, how?’ – and I said I have no idea, but we’ll find a way. We’ll make it. We’ll make it happen."

“And that’s literally in a pub in England, that’s how it happened.”

Adrian Newey, the aerodynamic wizard of the F1 grid, has since been with Red Bull and has created absolute beauties like the RB18 and RB19 that have helped them get back to winning ways with Max Verstappen.

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Red Bull reveals first details of 2024's RB20

After winning both the world championships this season with ease, it is apparent that the Milton Keynes outfit might have started some work on their future car already. Although the RB19 itself is one of the strongest F1 cars ever witnessed on the tracks, it still needs some evolution to keep up the domination.

Their competitors, mainly Ferrari and McLaren, have been getting closer this season steadily with their developments. Lando Norris managed to remain close to Verstappen for a very long time during the Brazilian GP and at the same time, Carlos Sainz managed to win the race in Singapore. That still remains the only race that was won by a non-Red Bull driver this entire season.

Paul Monaghan revealed, as quoted by Motorsport, that the team will follow the concept from the RB19 because it would be "foolish" to throw it away.

"It perhaps wouldn’t surprise you if I said it will be an evolution of the current car, as it will be a bit foolish to throw this concept away," Monaghan said. "But equally, we’ve got to make some progress. We’ve got to find some lap time. The opposition is on us and if they do a step, then we’d better have a bigger step."

"But [the RB20] carries over a lot of the lessons and benefits of the current car, and then from Bahrain next year, we’ll see whether we’ve done a good enough job," he added.

Red Bull might have had a headstart in planning the upcoming season of Formula 1. With just two races to go in this season, other teams will also try to come up with major developments for the future.