Newey, who has built title-winning F1 cars in the past for Williams and McLaren, confirmed a couple of days before the 2011 kick-off in Australia that he has been approached multiple times by Ferrari for a job at Maranello. And every time he turned the offers down, showing a great deal of loyalty to the Austrian squad he currently reports to.
“I've had offers from Ferrari in the past and I've considered them seriously. But F1 is a people sport, not a marque sport,” Newey is quoted as saying by F1 Racing magazine.
“Working for Ferrari just for the sake of working for Ferrari isn't something that I'm interested in. It's flattering if people rate the work I do but that's not why I get out of bed in the morning. I do it because I enjoy the design challenge of F1,” he added.
Ferrari's team principal Stefano Domenicali jokingly confirmed the offers, telling the Gazzetta dello Sport newspaper in Italy that “Adrian is one of the best, if not the best, in F1. We joke a lot about the possibility (of working with him) but I have the impression he is happy in England and that he will stay at Red Bull.”
“It's understandable why any team in F1 would be interested in Adrian but he is very much enjoying life at Red Bull and I'm sure he'll be here for years to come,” came the quick response of Domenicali's Red Bull counterpart, Christian Horner.
Instead of moving to Ferrari, Newey has recently committed to a multi-year stay at Milton Keynes. In fact, his contract extension was one of the main reasons behind Sebastian Vettel's own deal prolongation, as the German seems to have conditioned his stay until 2014 to a new deal for the famous car designer.
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