Lewis Hamilton, the Mercedes star once approached his Red Bull rival Adrian Newey in order to get away from McLaren. Hamilton wanted to switch to the Austrian team as they dominated the streets for four years in a row in the 2010s.
After winning the 2008 F1 world championship, the Briton was already a star driver with his silver and red McLaren. So much so that the Stevenage-born pilot almost became synonymous with the Woking-based team.
However, the relationship between the driver and the team began to fall apart as years went by. Even though his bonding with the British team looked alright from the outside, it was not as it seemed.
With Red Bull winning with Sebastian Vettel, and Hamilton failing to keep up in his McLaren, he felt it was time for him to move. Move to championship-winning Red Bull even if he was earning a whopping $13,900,000 at that age back in 2012.
Hamilton’s approach to Newey and Red Bull
As Hamilton was ready for a move away from the British team, it was already known by Red Bull and its chief technical officer Newey. But the Austrian team didn’t approach him despite knowing about his unsettlement.
Rather it was the seven-time world champion who asked for a switch to Red Bull. And this was to a great extent as he went on to pay a visit to the engineer’s home in the United Kingdom to speak about the possibility.
2010 Japanese GP
Jenson Button (Mclaren) and Lewis Hamilton (Mclaren) pic.twitter.com/6m2Q4hT9sv— F1 in the 2010’s🏆🏁🚦 (@F1inthe2010s1) June 10, 2023
Talking about this, in his book How to Build a Car, the 64-year-old wrote, “He approached us about a possible drive with Red Bull and came to see me at my home, which was quite funny.”
Elaborating on the incident, Newey went on to describe how Hamilton’s visit was an interesting event as the Red Bull engineer’s Personal Assistant Anne- Lise was a huge fan of the British driver.
As he arrived to meet Newey, Anne-Lise became ecstatic seeing the then McLaren driver at the doorstep. Despite everything, the deal between Hamilton and Red Bull didn’t work out in the end.
Why did Red Bull turn Hamilton down?
As revealed by the Red Bull aero god, the Milton Keynes-based team usually invests huge amounts in their driver program and hence taking Hamilton was not an option.
As a result, they decided to stick to the same driving pair Sebastian Vettel and Mark Webber for two more seasons till 2013 and picked up four more titles together.
Notably, Red Bull approached Fernando Alonso for his service, but the talks fell out, unfortunately. In the end, Daniel Riccardo took Webber’s seat in 2014 and Daniel Kvyat took Vettel’s seat in 2015.
