"Well, you need to join and here’s a check for 150 grand" - Red Bull maestro Adrian Newey shares hilarious story of being approached by an F1 boss

Red Bull aero wizard Adrian Newey recently shared a hilarious story of how Eddie Jordan, the former F1 team owner of Jordan Grand Prix, handed him a check in a pub to lure him to join his team. Even when Newey was new to F1 and worked at Williams back in the 1990s, he was desired by many teams for his talent.

A few days ago, Newey was a guest on the Formula for Success podcast, hosted by Eddie Jordan and David Coulthard. Newey recalled that Eddie Jordan once came to a local pub in Oxfordshire, where he was present for Sunday lunch. He also said he was surprised to see Jordan in the pub.

“I didn’t really know Eddie very well,” Newey recounted. “I obviously knew who he was, of course. And anyway, I was at the local pub in Oxfordshire, when I was at Williams, and it was a pig roast or something, a Sunday lunch in the middle of the summer. And suddenly, EJ appears at this flipping barbecue in the pub. Eddie, 'What are you doing [here]? Do you like a beer? What’s the craic here?’"

Red Bull's current chief technical director understood soon enough that Eddie Jordan's arrival at the pub was not a mere coincidence. According to Newey, Jordan handed a check for £150,000 to him, urging him to join the Jordan Grand Prix F1 team.

“And it became evident that it wasn’t just a coincidence, he hadn’t simply turned up that day. And he basically said, ‘Well, you need to join and here’s a check for 150 grand,'” Newey added.

As soon as Newey revealed the figure, Eddie Jordan jokingly objected and claimed that it was not a £150,000 check but a £500,000 one.

“It was 500!” he said.

Adrian Newey, however, denied Jordan's claim that the check was worth half a million. He further said that the check was not even signed.

“No it wasn’t! It wasn’t signed, you didn’t sign it,” Newey said.

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Adrian Newey has no plans to leave Red Bull or retire from F1 just yet

Adrian Newey has helped Red Bull quite a lot ever since he joined the team in 2006. He has been an integral part of the design team, helping shape one of the most dominant cars in F1 history. Unfortunately for the team's rivals, Newey has no plans to leave Red Bull or retire from the sport anytime soon.

Speaking recently to Motorsport.com, he talked about his time with McLaren and Williams and why he moved to the Austrian-British team.

"That’s really why I joined Red Bull, it was a bit of a career risk at the time, but I just wanted that sort of involvement again of being involved with the development of the team right at the start. In that sense, having been involved in the start with Christian and Helmut (Marko), how we developed the team, then why would I want to walk away from that?" said Newey.

Adrian Newey has now developed tremendously successful cars for Red Bull that have helped the team win a total of six constructors' championships.