Adrian Newey’s Aston Martin masterplan is finally about to face its verdict

Adrian Newey’s remarkably candid interview this week could be interpreted as a warning shot across the bows of the other teams and mark the start of a remarkable turnaround for Aston Martin.

The Aston Martin team boss spoke in a lengthy interview with his squad’s official website about the troubles encountered this year, as well as commenting on the importance of the upcoming AMR26 upgrade package.

Adrian Newey explains Aston Martin’s decisive AMR26 upgrade gamble

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“It was a painful decision,” Newey admitted in the interview, addressing why Aston Martin has opted against the usual development path of chipping away with regular upgrades to keep pace with the AMR26’s grid rivals.

“While others have been adding performance, we’ve effectively been standing still in relative terms, so each weekend can feel more painful than the last.”

There’s a saying that it’s always darkest before the dawn and, certainly, it has been dark days for Aston Martin of late. Ever since the car rolled out onto the Barcelona race-track at the end of January, it has been plagued by reliability issues and drivability problems that has resulted in the AMR26 being Newey’s biggest flop since his stillborn McLaren MP4/18 over 20 years ago.

The decision to leave upgrades aside and hold firm has even resulted in Aston Martin being eclipsed by the newcomer Cadillac squad, and the performance of the car at Fernando Alonso’s home race in Spain was so poor that it had chief trackside officer, Mike Krack, apologising to the fans after the chequered flag.

It’s been a very difficult time, capped off by the two drivers struggling to keep a lid on their frustrations – Lance Stroll is rarely loquacious, but the Canadian has been unable to disguise his desire to not talk about this particular annus horribilis for several months now.

As for Alonso, the Spaniard has occasionally let out a mild outburst of frustration but has shown his maturity by keeping his emotions in check in the face of relentless negativity – not something that he was always able to do.

The biggest question of recent races has been when the accumulated upgrades that have piled up back on the Silverstone factory floor will actually be rolled out, and Newey revealed that it will be at the Hungarian Grand Prix later this month, across both cars.

It’s the last race before the summer break and is expected to be introduced before the introduction of the ADUO-updated Honda power unit.

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With Alonso having made it clear that the upgrade package is of utmost importance to him as he weighs up his future in Formula 1, it’s brought the importance of the Budapest weekend – the venue of his first ever Grand Prix win – into sharp focus. If the changes don’t mark a step forward on that one weekend, will Alonso call time on his career?

“It’s very important,” Newey admitted of the enormity of the situation.

“Fernando is really looking forward to the upgrade and, if it performs, we hope he’ll be in the cockpit for another season.

“Given his experience, his feel for the car, his ability to guide development, he’s a tremendous asset. But he wants to see clear, tangible progress. If we can show that we’re moving decisively in the right direction, he’s absolutely committed to being behind the wheel.”

It’s this remarkable candidness that kicked off a deluge of headlines after Newey’s extraordinary press conference at the season opener in Australia, with the British engineer revealing that that had come on the weekend where the true extent of the team’s troubles had become apparent.

Newey has been quiet ever since, also revealing in the interview that an illness has resulted in him having to balance work and life more over the last 12 months, but this breaking of the silence could be interpreted as a sign of confidence that something special could be about to be unleashed.

After all, there hasn’t been anything worth talking about for months – what makes this upgrade and the team’s future prospects worth an official heads up, if failure and embarrassment is the end product?

Think back to the aforementioned MP4/18. This troubled design was the basis for the initially uncompetitive MP4/19 but, by mid-season and the introduction of a B-spec, became the very competitive and race-winning MP4/19B – a car that even managed to beat the dominant F2004 at Spa-Francorchamps. The follow-up, the MP4/20, was arguably the standard-setter of 2005, even if it was let down by Mercedes unreliability.

Newey has been willing to come forward and put his hands up to take the blame for the difficulties of this season, admitting that the “bold” aerodynamic direction – one taken without the “luxury of exploring multiple concepts in depth due to timing” – was one largely pushed by him.

“It has thrown up challenges we didn’t anticipate,” he said, before explaining what’s changed to transform Aston Martin behind the scenes.

“We were relying on tools and processes that had been patched and bodged for years – you could trace some of them right back to the very early days of the Jordan team that was based here in Silverstone, long before Aston Martin returned to the grid. At some point, a system that’s just patch‑on‑patch stops being fit for purpose. That’s where we had got to.

“The result was a very frustrating car build. Parts weren’t being ordered at the right time – not because people weren’t doing their jobs, but because the underlying system was failing them.”

“We’ve taken this difficult spell as an opportunity to overhaul how we work.

“We’re making big strides in our in‑house facilities and production capabilities. You won’t see all the gains immediately, but they’ll be visible on the updated car: many more components are now produced in‑house. The gearbox casing is manufactured here, the floor patterns and floors themselves are made here, and a lot of parts that were previously outsourced have come back in-house.

“That gives us better cost control, but more importantly, much greater flexibility and control over our own destiny.

“Bringing more work in‑house gives us better quality control, better responsiveness and a tighter feedback loop from research to design to manufacture.”

The decision to postpone upgrades until the roll-out of one large one is something Newey said has been an “investment” into the team’s future. Let’s not forget that, while he’s unproven at this level of overall team management, he boasts a huge amount of experience and wisdom accumulated from decades of working at championship-winning teams, including recent knowledge of Red Bull Racing.

This is a man who knows what a race-winning team should look like. On the flipside of that, also what a team that will never get there looks like.

“We’re predicting a large step, but I’m reluctant to put specific numbers out there. We’ll have to see when the car gets on track,” Newey said of the updated AMR26, which has seen the chassis undergo re-homologation and fresh crash testing.

These are not the tasks of a moment, and highlight significant and fundamental changes to the design, which its designer says should also reduce the weight down to near the limit of 768kg.

Along with that, the car will have a new nose and refined aerodynamic surfaces, as well as revised rear suspension.

“Historically, at this team, there hasn’t been enough investment in engineering simulation tools – not just project management systems, but the core physics tools themselves,” he said.

“We’re putting that investment in now, but you don’t rewrite and validate those tools overnight. Correlating them properly with the real car takes time.

“At the moment, they’re improving, but the real gains from that work will come later in the year.”

To come forward and speak candidly about the changes he’s made, together with team owner Lawrence Stroll, suggests Newey is more confident that he has refined his squad closer to this ideal image of what a modern F1 team should look like.

Has Aston Martin reached its lowest point, and is it about to start a rapid ascent, with Newey having ripped off the necessary plaster to mould an average team into something more akin to what was anticipated coming into this year?

It’s difficult to imagine that this is sheer filibustering from a man not known for shouting from the rooftops. If it is, it will be quickly exposed as mere bluster, particularly if Alonso decides to walk away from the cockpit.

What’s more likely? That a man with a near-impeccable record of success is bluffing about improvements in a misguided attempt to rally the troops and coax a weary two-time F1 World Champion to stay? Or is it to gently warn the world that, like the inevitable dawn, Newey’s Aston Martin is about to actually arrive?

It would be foolish to bet against the latter.

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@thomasmaheronf1 ahead of the #F1 #BritishGP , Adrian Newey offered a very candid explanation as to Aston Martin’s struggles, the upgrades coming in Hungary, and the fundamental revolution he’s started at his team. #astonmartin #adriannewey ♬ original sound – thomasmaheronf1