Monaghan 'sad' that Newey is leaving: 'It's a loss to the team'
Paul Monaghan is sad about Adrian Newey's departure. In an exclusive interview with GPblog, the Red Bull Racing chief engineer reveals that he regrets Newey's departure and that the team will miss his expertise considerably.
This is a stark contrast to previous statements made by people within the team.
According to Helmut Marko, Max Verstappen and Christian Horner, Adrian Newey's departure is a loss for the team, but not as big a loss as everyone thinks. Newey was said to have been less involved with the F1 team for years and, therefore, has less of an influence on the current car's design. It turns out that is not quite the case after all.
Monaghan had been working with Newey for quite a long time. 'Pedals', as Paul's nickname goes, already worked with Newey at McLaren and moved to Red Bull Racing almost simultaneously. Monaghan has been involved in Red Bull Racing's F1 project since day one and knows better than anyone how much influence Newey has had on it. After all, Newey designs the car, and he has to squeeze the maximum out of every weekend.
"I suppose my overwhelming reaction to Adrian's leaving is one of sadness. He contributed so much to the growth and the evolution of the team and drove us towards the first championships, 10, 11, 12, and 13, with such vigour and commitment. It was always quite eye-opening when he got those little opportunities to see what he wanted to achieve and his thoughts," Monaghan said.
"They were equally wonderful lessons, and I hope I was humble enough to learn from it. He's a pretty switched-on chap. The track record rather speaks for itself as we evolved through the first years of the hybrid [era] and then obviously picking up the Honda engine. Then again you see different cars with a different set of rules in 2022.
He was never, whatever anybody says, cut off from the process. He was still pin sharp for me and quite insightful."
"If he wants to stop, I have full respect and say, OK, it's entirely his choice. On a personal basis, I will miss his input and the humbling explanations when I haven't understood something. He then embellishes you on how it's supposed to work and what we're supposed to do. It's just different, isn't it? But times change and he's made his own decision. I'm a bit sad because it's a loss to the team, and he's contributed so much to it that I think it's just a shame," he added.
What Monaghan could learn from Newey
And so, does Monaghan have an example of what he learned from Newey? ''Yes, there were plenty of them. Quite often, it is rather humbling for me [laughs]. We had a bit of trouble with the consistency of the steering in the car. We couldn't understand it. And so there's some circumstantial evidence as to what was going on. You can talk to him a bit. Then we slowly evolved to think, OK, now we're beginning to grasp something. Now we're evolving. Now we're learning."
"It was a collaborative process. His openness to ideas, thoughts, and considerations was always brilliant. It didn't matter where the idea came from. After some thoughts, inquiries, and a few questions, if he thought it was a good idea, we would proceed with it at whatever pace we had to go, whatever size of the change might be. If he thought it was a stupid idea, I generally found out fairly quickly," Monaghan said.
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When Helmut Marko was asked in front of the Servus TV camera yesterday if he knew which team Newey would go to,
he replied laughing: "I can tell you that Adrian is not going to retire, go fishing or breed pigeons after the gardening leave, haha."
It seems he left because he was no longer appreciated, as Horner said, he had not contributed to the last cars,
which according to Monaghan is not correct. Also his wife Amanda stated that that was a load of hogwash and absolute bollocks.
