Fernando Alonso had repeatedly expressed his career-long wish to drive a Formula One car designed by Adrian Newey. The announcement in 2024 that Newey would be joining Aston Martin the following season in fact saw the Spaniard extend his contract with the Silverstone-based team.
However, the dream has become a nightmare for the double world champion, as the British Racing Green-liveried team’s cars have been woeful since pre-season testing. As an engineer, Newey is undoubtedly one of the best, but having stepped into the role of Aston Martin team principal, his mistakes have been glaring and obvious.
Late Arrivals and Blaming Honda Down Under
First up, Newey is known for pushing the envelope in terms of fiddling with his designs to the last possible minute. Now in charge of the sweet shop, he did just this, which saw Aston Martin arrive four days late to the Barcelona shakedown and register a paucity of mileage.
The AMR26 was suffering from extreme vibrations in pre-season testing and on its arrival in Melbourne—something Newey attributed solely to Honda. His lack of political nous meant he threw the team’s key engine partner under the bus Down Under, claiming his chassis was one of the best on the grid and that the issues all lay at the Japanese auto manufacturer’s door.
From Monaco Miracles to a B-Spec Redesign
Newey was not seen again until Monaco, when he had far less to say when pressed on the odd occasion. By some quirk of fate during a chaotic climax to the race in the principality, Fernando Alonso managed to steal a point for the Silverstone-based team.
The cold, hard reality for Aston Martin is that their AMR26 has retired on 10 of 22 occasions. Without Alonso’s point in Monaco, they would be plumb last behind newcomers, the US-based Cadillac team.
Despite claims about having the fifth-best chassis, Newey behind the scenes realised he had taken the team up a blind alley. The decision was made after China not to develop the AMR26, but to work on a new concept entirely. The “upgrades” brought to Hungary were in fact a B-Spec car with a new chassis, which had been re-crash-tested with the FIA.
The Illusions of the Hungaroring
And it certainly appears that the Aston Martin 2.0 F1 car is on the up. From being four seconds off the pace in qualifying for the Belgian Grand Prix, Fernando Alonso snuck into Q2 in Hungary to finish just 2.5 seconds behind session leader Lando Norris. Yet given the Hungaroring circuit is around half the length of Spa, this was to be expected.
Honda Racing Corporation (HRC) president Koji Watanabe told Japanese publication as-web.jp: “It’s partly down to the characteristics of the circuit.” The real test will come next time out in Zandvoort, when Honda bring the first of their power unit upgrades.
Yet Newey also admitted in Hungary that there would be more improvements on the car for the upcoming Dutch GP. This was something Watanabe also referred to in his interview: “In that sense, we are determined to deliver solid results ahead of the upcoming race at Zandvoort.”
“A Complete Nightmare”: Failures in Sakura and Silverstone
Yet all is still not well at Aston Martin, as Lance Stroll suffered a suspension failure in the all-new AMR26 during FP1 at the Hungarian Grand Prix. Speaking after the incident, Newey admitted: “These first races have been a complete nightmare. Hopefully we can get at least to a point of respectability now. I think that is the immediate goal. Then from there, we can try to keep moving forwards.”
For a team who were hoping to challenge for honours, Newey’s early reign at Aston Martin has been nothing short of a disaster. Much is being made of the fact that the F1 designer only joined the team last year on March 2nd, months after the new regulations had been published.
Yet this is smoke and mirrors because, despite being restricted by his Red Bull gardening leave, Newey would have been thinking through his designs and sketching ideas before he officially arrived at Silverstone to start work.
In fact, paddock rumours suggest that on his start day he cancelled the work already commissioned by the Aston Martin design engineers to switch to a project of his own making. Then the wind tunnel was not fully commissioned until mid-April in 2025, meaning they were almost four months behind the rest of the field in terms of testing their models.
Past His Sell-By Date?
The final nail in the Aston Martin 2026 coffin was a visit by Newey and his predecessor Andy Cowell to Sakura, the home of Honda in November last year, where they discovered an understaffed engine programme which was months behind schedule. Honda had initially withdrawn from F1 for the 2026 season and, with the previous engines frozen from 2022, had lost many of their experienced engineers.
Having decided to reverse their decision to leave, Honda appear to have been slow to staff up, which is the reason for their underperforming power unit. The cumulative effect of all these failings saw Aston Martin start the year with both a car and an engine which were not competitive.
Since then, Newey has also “overhauled” the processes and systems of work in the team—another disruption which will take time to bed in. But for now, the story is that the Aston Martin B-Spec car is an improvement, although the lap times compared to the previous race in Spa are unconvincing.
Only time will tell as to whether Newey can turn things around, because even F1’s greatest designers before him finally go past their sell-by date.
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The Judge, a nom de plume of an experienced F1 journalist and site founder with long-standing sources across the paddock. With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
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I truly think AN HAS passed his sell-by date.
His days at RB were his best. He should have retired then, and his reputation as one of the greats would have been intact. After all, the design at RBR ‘fell into his lap’ really, given his earlier studies … that certainly didn’t mean he could do ‘everything, everywhere, all at once’.
He believed his own PR. BIG mistake for both him AND Stroll Snr