Everyone here sees Newey as a magic bullet but seems to forget that other people can indeed build great cars.

If there's too much politics going on then that'll make it difficult to work as a good team. Newey doesn't limit himself to just designing. He also wants to be involved with drivers and how the team is setup.

His book is pretty telling on this. At various times it wasn't his design work that made a change, it was things like how the team is setup.

I'm sure that you're right that Red Bull will have the best car for the next few years. Even without significant development they're far enough ahead aerodynamically that I bet their development could stagnate a little for a year or two before other teams caught up.

Having said that Newey does seem to have an innate understanding of aerodynamics than even other good engineers black. This doesn't make it impossible for other people to build good cars but it does mean he can do it faster with less iterations.

It's always been my understanding that most of Mercedes dominance was due mostly to engine development. Especially when Red Bull was using Renault engines. Mercedes could just brute force their way to the front even if they were doing it with less efficient aerodynamics. Oh and of course just throwing money at the problem seeing that was pre-cost cap. With the cost cap and limitations on CFD and wind tunnel time. The number of iterations matters a lot more now.

Yup.

Newey has designed some duds, nobody's perfect. But more realistically, even if Newey has a hand in making a very performant package, it doesn't mean others won't also pull off the same.

RB already has the benefit of a huge headstart. It's also important to remember that it's kind of up in the air who will have the best engine in 2026, which Newey has zero control over.

Hmmm interesting. I don't know the exact wording of the clause obviously. But from what I understood if there were changes in key personnel responsible for the performance of the team and car, he would be free to break the contract early. I would think someone like Newey would count for that.

I think for anybody in F1 that's all they want and only leave to another series if no seat is available. And even then they might sit out a year whilst lobbying for a seat. So I would expect Verstappen to go to another team before ever leaving.

Verstappen is young enough that he doesn't have the Ferrari dream, many people before them driving for Ferrari in F1 was seen as the ultimate goal. But for the younger generation who have seen mostly the bad years for Ferrari, this isn't a dream as much anymore.

So many people are eager to be a winner but it must be so tiring/boring winning constantly with literally zero competition.