Jordan disagrees with Horner's view: 'Newey is on gardening leave'

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Eddie Jordan believes Newey was not announced early at Aston Martin
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  • Corwin Kunst

Adrian Newey will join Aston Martin from March 2025, it was announced at a press conference earlier this month. Christian Horner thought it was a bit premature and premature of the British formation to present Newey now, while the top designer is still under contract with Red Bull Racing. Eddie Jordan does not quite agree with that reading of the team boss.

As Newey's manager, Jordan was involved in all discussions. The former team owner conducted the talks on behalf of the engineer to get out from under his ongoing contract. "I'm not a young guy anymore, and it was probably one of the greatest professional, cool things that I've ever done," he said on the Formula for success podcast.

According to Jordan, Newey is currently on gardening leave. He can then join Aston Martin from March 2025. He, therefore, argues that the timing of Newey's announcement is not strange, despite Horner's claims last week in Baku. The 65-year-old Briton is also no longer involved in Red Bull's F1 business. Newey does, however, continue to work on the RB17 hypercar project.

Jordan was happy with Red Bull talks

The flamboyant Irishman is content with the agreements. "You did not hear a peep from me until the 6th of September. And that was the date given by Red Bull as to when we could or couldn't say anything. So I have nothing but admiration for Adrian because he never said peep until the date that we were allowed by Red Bull to make any comment," he said.

"That was adhered to in every single way. I can promise you that I don't know anybody who breached that. So the best of care was made to respect. And Adrian was fastidious about this. The respect that he has for Red Bull is unbelievable and is unsurmountable in many respects because I think it's just there," he added.

Jordan is happy that Red Bull and Newey were able to finalise everything nicely and that there was no bad blood from either party. "It was conducted in the most unbelievably correct way. It is possibly the finest thing that I've ever done.“And the reason I say that is because it was arranged and coordinated in such an elegant way that I feel very proud about Red Bull. I feel very proud about myself and my actions there. And I feel incredibly proud about Adrian and how he managed that situation.”

This article has been created in collaboration with Matt Gretton

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