The much publicised massive reset in the Formula One car and engine design reset for 2026 is now just months away. Whilst the current sport’s headlines are covering the shock dismissal of Christian Horner from the Red Bull Racing team, his old partner in crime Adrian Newey is hard at work.
During his final years at Red Bull Racing, Newey had decided to work part time on the F1 car design projects, spending around six months a year at his second home in South Africa. Even so his loss of influence has been evident in the performance of the team’s 2025 challenger, which has racked up around half the points of its predecessor at the half way stage of the season.
Newey committed to return to full time employment when joining Aston Martin, clearly believing he can roll back the years and add to his twelve constructor titles and thirteen driver championships which were a result of his efforts at Williams, McLaren and Red Bull Racing.
Newey process when joining new F1 team
The guru F1 car designer has previous form on his arrival at a new team, often dodging the current car design he inherited and preferring to look to the future. The first Williams Newey was in complete control over was the FW14 which had more in common with his previous design for Leighton House than its predecessor the FW13.
When moving to McLaren, he ignored the 1997 car as much as possible, getting to work whilst on gardening leave on the 1998 big rules reset. His move to Red Bull late in 2005 meant he body swerved the RB2 which proved to be uncompetitive.
“I spent some time trying to understand the RB2,” he told veteran F1 writer Stuart Codling, although he quickly diverted his attention to the Red Bull challenger for 2007. That task included reshaping the design department he inherited, which was pretty much the same as when the team were branded Jaguar Racing.
Comments from Fernando Alonso at the recent British Grand Prix, suggest Newey is following his tried and tested path when joining a new F1 team.
Newey ignores 2025 Aston Martin car
“He’s working, he’s involved,” Fernando Alonso said to Spanish broadcaster DAZN at Silverstone. “He’s very motivated. But it’s true that this year’s car doesn’t seem to interest him much. Every time we ask something about this year or how to improve something, he gets up and goes to another office. So he’s already in 2026 mode…”
That said, Aston Martin have brought upgrades to their AMR25 this season which appear to have improved the performance on track. There was a new floor in Imola which was fine tuned for the Spanish Grand Prix, where Fernando Alonso finally broke his duck for the season.
There were new ‘fences’ fitted to the floor of the car last time out in Silverstone and whilst the team believe there is evidence in the data of an improvement, the marginal improvements are small. “I think it’s a step forward – the car felt a bit better,” said Alonso after the British Grand Prix. “The data showed that in some parts of the track there’s improvement; in others it’s harder to see. So, let’s say it’s a very small upgrade package, but it’s always welcome.”
Yet as the current set of regulations draw to a close, the teams have found all the groundbreaking upgrades possible and are now scratching around for half a tenth here and there. Alonso makes the point well that this means even the smallest improvements can now makes a big difference.
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Smallest of margins as regulations mature
“The way the grid is right now – with five or six cars within two tenths – a tenth or even half a tenth is valuable. It also shows that the team keeps pushing. We’re not content being stuck in the midfield. We want to be as close as possible to the top teams by the end of the year,” said the Spaniard at Silverstone.
Whether Newey has had any hand in these upgrades remains a secret within the walls of the Silverstone based team, however he does have a big issue to resolve in terms of the Aston Martin analysis tools he described recently as “weak.” At his first appearance of the season on the pit wall in Monaco, Newey was candid over the task ahead with assembled media.
“It’s fair to say that some of our tools are weak. Particularly the driver-in-the-loop simulator needs a lot of work because it’s not correlating at all at the moment, which is a fundamental research tool,” said Newey. He added that Aston Martin need to “sort out a plan to get it where it needs to be, but that’s probably a two-year project in truth”.
Whilst the correlation between the design office concepts and the real world performance must be improved, this is not a problem that Aston Martin suffer with alone. Red Bull Racing have been struggling this season, as their car arrives nowhere for Friday practice as the pre-race weekend simulations lead the team to the wrong setup.
Aston Martin correlation issues
By Saturday, the correlation issues are ironed out and as Verstappen showed in Silverstone he went from half a second off the top of the time sheets the day before, to claiming a shock pole position on Saturday as the team shifted to a low downforce setup.
The 2026 Aston Martin will be the first all Newey designed car since his arrival at the team. With brand new car and engine designs coming into effect, Newey will hope to once again demonstrate his incredible talent for building fast race cars.
Even so, when joining Red Bull Newey’s first full car design went racing in 2007 and the team achieved its best ranking of P5 in the constructors’ championship. Yet it was Newey’s fourth design for the team in Milton Keynes, which became the first chariot to carry Sebastian Vettel to his first drivers title and saw the team beating its more established rivals.
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