Ted Kravitz rejects Lewis Hamilton theory as Adrian Newey to Ferrari raised

Adrian Newey in the Red Bull garage.

Sky Sports pit-lane reporter Ted Kravitz has ruled out Adrian Newey joining Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari as the F1 design guru has rejected them plenty of times in the past.

Ferrari have often tried to lure Newey to Maranello but the now 65-year-old has always turned them down, largely due to their location away from the UK.

But with Hamilton moving there, many had considered Newey may finally be tempted to make the swap, but Kravitz does not agree with that line of thinking.

Ted Kravitz rejects Adrian Newey Ferrari theory

The Sky F1 reporter was answering fans’ questions for the broadcaster when the subject of Newey was raised.

“No, I don’t think who’s driving the Ferrari is the motivating factor for Newey,” he replied when asked if Hamilton could be an influence on the Red Bull designer. “He’s had many opportunities to join Ferrari in the past. Nothing’s impossible, he might join them in the future, but I don’t think it’s got anything to do with which driver is in the car.

“I think it’s more factors like, where he lives, communication with the team, and potential freedoms for him to do his work are more important to Adrian than designing a car for Lewis or Max [Verstappen], or whoever.”

Another question related to Hamilton was whether the seven-time World Champion would be frozen out of any meetings with Mercedes and Kravitz reckoned the driver will expect that to happen.

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“I wouldn’t have imagined that there were many meetings that he will expect to be in that he’ll be frozen out of,” the 49-year-old said. “He’ll be in all the meetings he needs to be to progress this year’s car. But he wouldn’t expect to be in a planning meeting for 2025, so he won’t be.

“So I think this one will work itself out quite easily. I don’t think there’ll be many times when they’re in an engineering briefing at a racetrack and they stop and say, ‘Right at this point, Lewis, you can leave the room.’

“It’s just not going to happen because they’re going to be fighting until Abu Dhabi to try to win as many races with Lewis and George [Russell], as possible. And I think they respect him plenty.”