Aston Martin make a big admission about Newey – Since acquiring the Silverstone based Formula One team, Lawrence Stroll rebranded the outfit from Racing Point to the iconic British sports car builder, Aston Martin. The Silverstone team was founded in 1991 and first competed as Jordan F1, yet it has had a number of iterations over the decades, becoming Midland, then Spyker F1 before emerging as Force India following its acquisition by Vijay Mallya.
Stroll inherited a team in decline back in 2018, but set about a $200m investment program which has seen the team move into state of the art new facilities outside the gates of the Northamptonshire circuit. A new wind tunnel together with a new rolling road simulator have been installed, along with brand new simulation tools and an AI based platform supplied this year by British tech success story ARM.
Together with his massive investment, Lawrence Stroll has brought in to the team the finest minds in F1. Adrian Newey with his twenty six championships is the finest F1 car designer and Andy Cowell, CEO and team principal, was the brains behind the Mercedes all dominant V6 hybrid powertrain, first launched in 2014.
Remarkable Aston turnaround in Hungary
The team will become a fully formed works outfit for 2026, with Honda moving their supply of F1 engines to Aston Martin on an exclusive basis. Yet reaching the top of F1 is often an incremental business and the AMR25 designed for this season’s competition has fallen below the expectations of those in Silverstone.
Before the recent Hungarian Grand Prix, Aston Martin were languishing down in eighth place in the constructors championship, before a remarkable turnaround at the Hungaroring. In each of the practice session in which they took part – Alonso missed the first due to back pain – both Fernando and Lance were top ten in the timesheets.
Qualifying was even more impressive as the pair easily made it through into the top ten shootout claiming P5 and P7 respectively. Indeed Aston were just one of three teams, including McLaren and the Racing Bulls to have both drivers in the final qualifying session. With Stroll and Alonso finishing where they started, it was the biggest haul of points the team have claimed at a race weekend this season.
The result catapulted the Silverstone squad ahead of rivals Kick Sauber and the Racing Bulls and the source of their success has been put down to an improved front wing together with results form the ARM AI platform finally kicking in.
Cowell says “car would be further up the grid”
Yet with Newey now being in situe for half a season, it would have been expected that Aston would have improved significantly its 2025 car. However, the F1 design guru decided his new full time efforts were best spent on the high regulation changes coming for 2026.
Team boss Andy Cowell reflects on this sacrifice made by the team in an interview with Racingnews365 he says, “the [Newey] investment will pay off over more racing seasons”, but ex-Mercedes powertrain guru suggests Alonso and Stroll would have stronger results this year had Newey concentrated more on the problematic AMR25.
“This year is hugely challenging because we’re here, and what we really want is to have the quickest car,” said Cowell. “And if ’26 wasn’t there, we would definitely have a quicker car today. If, from the first of March, Adrian had put all his efforts into improving the ’25 car, [I’m] absolutely certain that we would be further up the grid today.”
Cowell reiterates the team’s forward looking focus on the 2026 campaign, believing this will ad more value in the year’s to come. “And that’s challenging. On a Sunday evening… Saturday after qualifying, Sunday after a race, we’re not happy. Monday morning, we’re not happy. And then you get into the jobs list, and crack on,” he concluded.
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When will the Newey factor kick in?
It could be that Aston Martin may have to wait even longer than next year, before the Newey factor ‘kicks in.’ At Red Bull the team were in their fifth season with Newey designed cars, before Sebastian Vettel came from almost out of nowhere, to win his and the team’s first two championships.
Further, Newey is concerned about the 2026 powertrain regulations, which are clearly outside his sphere of expertise. “The reality is I can’t remember another time in Formula 1 when both the chassis regulations and the regulations have changed simultaneously,” he tells Auto Motor und Sport in February. “And in this case the chassis regulations have been very much written to try to compensate, let’s say, for the power unit regulations.
“So, it’s an extra dimension,” he added. “I think engine manufacturers will have learnt to an extent on the lack of preparation that the rivals to Mercedes did prior to that change (2014) but there has to be a chance that one manufacturer will come out well on top and it’ll become a power unit-dominated regulation, at least to start with.”
Newey claims one manufacturer could again dominate
With F1 on a push for net zero by 2030, the new power units will also use sustainable fuels – each manufacturer developing its own. The electrical power will be increased threefold and make up 50% of the total power unit output. With this in mind, the Aston Martin partner in charge of technical matters went on to muse, “there’s a chance, if it’s on the combustion engine side of it that somebody comes up with a dominant combustion engine, that will last through the length of the formula,” warned Newey. “Because the way the regulations are written, it’s quite difficult for people who are behind to catch up. If it’s on the electrical side, then there’s much more ability to catch up if you’re behind.”
Predictions of another era of F1 dominance with another design of the hatred V6 turbo hybrids, will not be music to the ears of F1’s owners. Stefano Domenicali, appointed by the commercial rights owners as CEO of F1, has already made it plain. He is pushing for a “catch up” mechanism to come into force, should one of the manufacturers come out dominant, or of one lags behind the rest of the field – as did Honda in 2015.
Whilst the Aston Martin updates in Budapest may well have been the result of a few hours set aside by Newey, even he can’t guarantee success for the Silverstone based team and the pecking order will only be revealed come the extended pre-season testing early in 2026.
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