Aston Martin raid Red Bull family again as strategist Nick Roberts set for 2026 switch
Aston Martin’s Newey-era rebuild continues to gather real momentum. The team that spent 2025 quietly laying foundations for F1’s next rulebook has moved to bolster the pit wall too, with Red Bull family strategist Nick Roberts set to join ahead of the 2026 season after a stint on gardening leave.
Roberts’ move, first reported elsewhere, is the latest green-tinged defection from the Red Bull ecosystem to Silverstone. It follows the headline arrival of Adrian Newey, who took up the newly created role of managing technical partner in March and has been shaping the team’s first challenger for the new regulations, expected to be the AMR26. Newey’s CV barely fits on a wall — involved in north of 200 wins and 25 world titles — and the 66-year-old has already begun re-cutting Aston Martin’s toolkit, triggering the recruitment of his former Red Bull ally Giles Wood to lead simulation and vehicle modelling after expressing early concerns over the team’s sim fidelity at Monaco.
The Roberts addition is a different kind of upgrade: not a big aerodynamic swing, but the sort of hire that turns tense Sundays. The Brit spent nearly a decade within Red Bull Racing’s strategy group, joining in 2016 as a race strategy analyst and stepping up to senior race strategy analyst by the end of 2022. He also had a hand in shaping the Red Bull junior pipeline with F1-grade analytics before switching to Faenza in early 2024, where he took over trackside strategy duties at Racing Bulls from the Australian Grand Prix onward.
Roberts announced his “premature” exit from Racing Bulls on social media, joking he’d be watching the midfield “as a regular punter” for the first time in 10 years and signing off with a green heart — a nudge that didn’t need a decoder ring. He’s expected to arrive at Aston Martin in time for ’26 once his leave period is served.
The move is also part of a broader shifting of chairs around the Red Bull universe. Roberts’ responsibilities at Racing Bulls are to be picked up by Guillaume Ducreux, who has moved across from Red Bull Racing to work trackside alongside chief strategist Matthieu Dubois. The pair previously operated together at Alpine, so there’s continuity in the handover even as the cast changes.
Back at the mothership, Red Bull Racing is already bracing for the end-of-2025 departure of long-serving strategy chief Will Courtenay to McLaren. McLaren pushed for an early release after announcing the hire following last year’s Singapore weekend, but Red Bull held firm; Courtenay is set to finally switch over by mid-2026 at the latest. Red Bull has been advertising for senior strategy talent, with the expectation that principal strategy engineer Hannah Schmitz will absorb much of Courtenay’s remit when the time comes.
For Aston Martin, Roberts is another tile in a mosaic that’s starting to look very deliberate. The 2026 regulations will upend the optimisation game: 50 percent electrical power, fully sustainable fuels, and active aerodynamics will change how teams plan and execute races as much as how they design cars. A decisive race wall — one that understands energy windows, lift-and-coast triggers, battery deployment versus tyre phase, and the timing games around active aero — will be a weapon. Pair that with Newey’s feel for concepts and a factory now fitted with a simulation brain trust he trusts, and you can see why Lawrence Stroll’s outfit has been hoovering up people who’ve lived through serial title fights.
There’s also the Honda factor. Aston Martin’s works partnership with the Japanese manufacturer starts in 2026, ending Honda’s current marriage with Red Bull and bringing a familiar power unit philosophy under a new roof. Strategists don’t just call undercuts; they orchestrate energy and thermal management, map out safety-car contingencies, and translate power unit characteristics into lap-time trade-offs. That integration will be critical from race one of the new era, and bringing in someone who’s operated inside a Red Bull/Honda ecosystem is a handy shortcut.
Newey’s quiet alliance-building behind the scenes has always been about more than drawing boards. His early push to modernise Aston Martin’s sim environment — and the quick hire of Giles Wood to do it — was a tell. Now comes reinforcement on the pit wall, with Roberts adding experience from the sharpest end of the sport’s strategy ranks. It’s the kind of spine-building that doesn’t scream for attention but tends to show up on Sundays, usually in the form of track position gained when everyone else blinks.
Aston Martin won’t claim victory in September for a season that starts 18 months from now, and nor should they. But the pattern is clear: stack the garage with proven winners, marry it to a clean-sheet car for an all-new rulebook, and try to be first out of the blocks when 2026 dawns. With Newey sketching, Honda powering, and now a Red Bull-trained strategist reading the chessboard, the Silverstone project is starting to look fully formed. The rest of the field will have noticed.
