“No! (there has been no offer to Newey from Aston Martin)” Krack said earlier this month. “We have a very strong technical team with Dan (Fallows, technical director), with Tom (McCollough, performance director), with Luca (Furbatto, engineering director).

“We’ve been joined lately by Bob Bell (executive director). So we are quite happy with what we have at the moment.”

Ferrari are thought to be more open to the idea of landing Newey than Mercedes, in what would be an exciting partnership for Lewis Hamilton at his new team next season.