Four months behind schedule, a completely new set of rules, and a car in transition: Aston Martin’s road to the 2026 Formula 1 season is off to a bumpy start
Aston Martin team principal Adrian Newey has admitted that his team will be behind schedule going into the 2026 Formula 1 season. The famous designer attributes this primarily to unfortunate timing in the preparations.
Newey said: “I myself only joined the team in March 2025, and the wind tunnel didn’t really get up and running until April. We didn’t have a model of the 2026 car in the wind tunnel until mid-April, while most, if not all, of our competitors had already been working on it since the end of the aerodynamic testing ban in early January 2025.”
“The reality is that this set us back about four months and led to a very, very compressed research and development cycle,” Newey explained.
Newey explains delay in shakedown
That is also the reason why Aston Martin arrived late for the 2026 Formula 1 shakedown in Barcelona: “The car was only finished at the last minute. We had to fight until the very end to be ready in time.”
However, according to Newey, what the public has seen of the Aston Martin AMR26 so far is only a temporary solution: “The car will be very different [at the season opener] in Australia from the one in Barcelona. And the car [at the finale] in Abu Dhabi will in turn be very different from the one at the start of the season.”
A historic technical challenge
For Newey, the key to a successful first year under the new Formula 1 regulations lies primarily in technical development—and in the adaptability of the teams: “The decisive factor will be to remain open to new approaches,” said Newey.
“Because 2026 is probably the first time in the history of Formula 1 that the powertrain rules and chassis rules have changed at the same time. It’s a completely new set of rules, which is a big challenge for all teams—and perhaps even more so for us than for others.”
To meet this challenge, Aston Martin has invested heavily – in its Silverstone site right next to the Grand Prix circuit, but also in high-calibre employees such as Newey. For example, Dan Fallows and Enrico Cardile joined Aston Martin as senior engineers from Red Bull and Ferrari, while former Mercedes engine chief Andy Cowell also came on board. However, Fallows has since left the team and now works for Racing Bulls. Newey, who was initially brought into the team as technical director and co-owner, was given an additional role just a few months after taking up his position at Aston Martin: in the fall, he became team principal, succeeding Cowell, who in turn was to concentrate on coordinating the powertrain project with Honda.