Ferrari are to make a determined bid to sign Adrian Newey, Formula One's greatest designer who has inspired championship-winning cars at Williams, McLaren and Red Bull.

The Scuderia, the biggest and richest team in F1, see Newey as the man to guide them out of their malaise – they have not won a race since the Spanish Grand Prix a year ago and are third in the constructors' championship, already 131 points behind Mercedes.

"Ferrari badly want Adrian Newey. I don't know whether they have talked to him yet, but if not, they will," a source closeto the Italian team said.

Ferrari's pursuit of Newey predates the emergence of Red Bull in 2010 when that team won the first of their four straight double championships. Now the Italian team are more desperate than ever. Their re-signing of Kimi Raikkonen has not been a success – he languishes in 11th place in the drivers' championship – and the love affair with the double title-winner Fernando Alonso has cooled on both sides in the past year.

But, essentially, the car is the problem. The complex changes for 2014 handed a massive advantage to the works teams but while Mercedes have dominated, winning all five races and also finishing second in four of them, Ferrari have struggled, and in Sunday's Spanish Grand Prix they were more than a second per lap slower than Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg.

The Red Bull car is generally accepted to be the best designed on the grid but their Renault engine has not been able to compete with Mercedes.

"There's always rumours, isn't there?" said Christian Horner, the Red Bull team principal, regarding speculation surrounding Newey. "It's the silly season. We're all under contract, so at some point I've got to think about the future, but my focus at the moment is trying to get back on top of those silver cars.

"It is an annual thing that there is speculation about Adrian's future but he has made his feelings clear to me about the team. He has paternal feelings towards the team and he is much more involved than he has been, and he enjoys the environment he works in.

"You can understand why Ferrari would be looking. Adrian has always enjoyed a challenge."

Newey, who earns an estimated £10m a year with the Milton Keynes team, is already rich and his head is unlikely to be turned by the wealth on offer at Maranello. Also, he hates politics. He walked away from McLaren because of the interference there and Ferrari are worse, by far the most political team in the paddock. Newey is known to enjoy life at Red Bull, who give him the freedom to do what he wants.

Two years ago he said: "Ferrari are a great team. Many drivers end up succumbing to Ferrari's romance and engineers aren't completely callous, but I won't be going to Ferrari.

"One reason is that my family is in England and being involved with Red Bull from the start has been hugely rewarding. I have no desire to work for anyone else in F1."

The former McLaren driver Martin Brundle said: "If I was at Ferrari, I'd be trying to sign Adrian Newey. The worst that can happen is that it destabilises Red Bull, or they might get hold of him. The story is building a head of steam in the Italian media."

If Newey does go to Ferrari it would be a blow for James Allison, who made the same move from Lotus in September. The current Ferrari was designed, mostly, before he arrived.