‘Everything that could go wrong did’ — Adrian Newey’s Aston Martin admission

Adrian Newey has admitted Aston Martin’s much-hyped start to Formula 1’s new era has unravelled into a perfect storm of problems, leaving the team well short of expectations.

Heading into Formula 1’s new regulatory cycle with Honda powering the AMR26, much was expected of Aston Martin, which is operating under the guidance of new team principal and design legend, Newey.

Adrian Newey explains Aston Martin’s difficult 2026 season start

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However, the design genius, who joined Aston Martin in March 2025, has endured a very difficult start to his tenure as the team principal.

Aston Martin has scored a solitary point in the first eight race weekends to sit P10 in the constructors’ championship ahead of newcomers Cadillac.

While the Silverstone team’s pre-season was blighted by vibration issues with its Honda engine, once the car got going, it was clear that the chassis had problems of its own. It was not only overweight, but also lacked downforce.

Aston Martin’s gearbox has also made the car difficult to drive, according to Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll.

Newey, who designs have won 26 championship titles, admitted it has been an “extremely challenging” start to the season.

He told Aston Martin’s Undercut: “On both the chassis side and the power unit side, we’ve been on the back foot from the start. In hindsight, we probably put too much expectation on ourselves – and of course, you must never forget the quality of the opposition you’re up against across the grid.

“We didn’t start serious work on the ’26 car until mid-March 2025 and didn’t get a model into the wind tunnel until mid‑April. That left us several months behind our rivals – and that’s a huge gap to close.”

However, it wasn’t purely timing.

While the timing meant the AMR26 project was rushed from the start, Newey accepts the team fell short of expectations, with one of the biggest problems being that the chassis is overweight.

“Timing was a huge part of it, but not the only part,” he conceded.

“We’ve got a very talented group of people, but as an organisation we weren’t yet working together as well as you would like and operating as one cohesive unit. Expectations were sky‑high, but the reality of where we were didn’t match that.

“On the chassis side, we’re quite a long way overweight. Some of that comes from integrating the power unit and dealing with vibration issues we’ve had to work through with Honda, but we also didn’t do as good a job as we should have on our side at saving weight. When you design in a rush, weight is the first thing that suffers because you don’t have the time to thoroughly optimise everything.

“Aerodynamically, we also took a bold direction – which was largely pushed by me – without the luxury of exploring multiple concepts in depth because time was against us. I wouldn’t say the direction we’ve taken is fundamentally wrong, but it has thrown up challenges we didn’t anticipate.”

Challenges that included the Honda engine and the Aston Martin gearbox.

Newey says dealing with those issues during pre-season testing meant the team had little time to work on improving the chassis and aero package and went into the season-opening Australian Grand Prix on the back foot.

“Melbourne was the wake‑up call,” he said. “Because of various power unit challenges, our first proper running was actually Free Practice Three at the Australian Grand Prix.

“Before that, in Barcelona and at the two Bahrain tests, we spent too much time in the garage just trying to get the power unit to run correctly with the chassis and gearbox.

“You know the idiom, ‘it never rains, but it pours’, and this is one of those classic cases where it felt like everything that could go wrong, did go wrong.”

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Aston Martin’s struggles at the beginning of this season saw Newey take the decisive decision not to upgrade the car in small increments, but rather put a major update package on the track before the summer break.

That is scheduled to debut at the Hungarian Grand Prix.

“Once we all got over the initial shock of where we were, the reaction was actually very positive, and this is what really sticks in my mind,” Newey explained.

“The whole group pulled together around two clear priorities: first, to pull ourselves out of the hole with a major update before the August break; second, to build the foundations properly for the future.

“It’s something every single one of us in the team should be proud of – the way we’ve all pulled together.

“You walk around the AMR Technology Campus at night and the lights are still on. There are a lot of late evenings, a lot of motivation, and a real determination to prove that we can do this. We have the facilities, we have the people, we have huge amounts of talent.

“The task is to make it all gel – and to an extent, take the pressure off ourselves so we can breathe and concentrate on medium‑ and long‑term projects, not just the next race.

“That means not only solving our immediate aero and mechanical issues, but also introducing better systems and processes that underpin how we design and build the car.”

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