Adrian Newey to Aston Martin could be the cherry on top of the Aston Martin cake. But also a doubled-edged sword.
There is one thing that Aston Martin, and Aston Martin alone can offer Adrian Newey: a clear defined structure as to whom he is directly responsible.
Red Bull did offer that when Dietrich Mateschitz was alive, and although he took a 'hands-off' approach, he was the ultimate boss. Now, there is a power struggle at the heart of the company with Oliver Mintzlaff and Helmut Marko on one side and Christian Horner on the other backed by majority shareholder Chalerm Yoovidhya.
At Mercedes, there is a 33.33% split between Toto Wolff, INEOS, and Daimler. Haas does have a single person to answer to in Gene Haas, but rumours of a sale are never too far away, whilst Alpine has gone back to the future to bring Flavio Briatore aboard as advisor to chairman Luca de Meo with new team principal Oliver Oakes.
For McLaren, the ultimate 'answer to' person is not Zak Brown but the head of Mumtalakat - the Bahraini sovereign wealth fund - Sheikh Salman bin Khalifa Al Khalifa, whilst down at Williams, to whom James Vowles is responsible at Dorilton Capital is unclear whilst Stake/Audi undergoes its growing pains.
The missing team there for those keeping scores is, of course, Ferrari. The team many immediately linked Newey to when it was announced in May he was leaving Red Bull after 19 years as chief technical officer.
But although Frederic Vasseur is the team principal and Benedetto Vigna his CEO, perhaps more so than at any other team, politics are an intrinsic part of Ferrari, for right or wrong.
Newey famously hates playing politics and wants to be left with his drawing board and one person to answer to be it Frank Williams, Ron Dennis or now Lawrence Stroll.
But his unveiling as managing technical partner at Aston Martin comes with a problem: too many cooks in the Silverstone kitchen.
