I have to say this move leaves me totally cold.
Ferrari would have been exciting because there’d be a great story around Hamilton looking for an eighth title in red. Williams would have been glorious, paradoxically both an underdog story and the return of a titanic force.
But Aston just has the dank whiff of a wheelbarrow full of cash. They already had the facilities and the technical leaders to reach the top; there’s an underlying niggling sense that any “Managing Technical Partner” would need to do little more than not upset the already bountiful applecart—whereas at Williams there would be little doubt about where those apples grew from. It feels like Newey’s gone for the money and Stroll’s invested in making sure no-one else has him as much as in actually having him. Neither of which are wrong or unexpected in any way, but it feels like there’s no more depth to it than that. If you were writing the script for “Newey: The Movie” this wouldn’t be where it would go.
Fair play to them both, but meh.