Adrian Newey admits Aston Martin ‘started from behind’ with AMR26 development

Adrian Newey has revealed that Aston Martin was four months behind its competitors with the development of the AMR26 car for the F1 2026 season.

It comes after the team was late to the first pre-season test of the season in Barcelona last week.

Adrian Newey admits Aston Martin ‘started from behind’ with F1 2026 car

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PlanetF1.com revealed on January 23 that Aston Martin was set to miss the start of ‘Shakedown Week’ at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

The team went on to announce the news three days later, confirming its plan to run on the final two days of the test.

The AMR26 finally broke cover on the penultimate afternoon of the shakedown with Lance Stroll at the wheel before Fernando Alonso took over for the final day.

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Aston Martin’s delayed start meant the team completed just two of its permitted three days of running in Barcelona, leaving the team at the bottom of the lap count with just 54 on the board – 100 fewer than next-best Cadillac.

The AMR26 car is the first Aston Martin F1 car to be designed by legendary designer Newey, who only started work with the team in March last year.

The 2026 season also marks the start of Aston Martin’s technical partnership with Honda, Red Bull’s former engine supplier.

With the chassis and engine rules changing simultaneously in F1 2026, Newey admitted that Aston Martin “started from behind” and faced a race against time to make the Barcelona test.

He told the Aston Martin F1 team’s official website: “2026 is probably the first time in the history of F1 that the power unit regulations and chassis regulations have changed at the same time.

“It’s a completely new set of rules, which is a big challenge for all the teams, but perhaps more so for us.

“The AMR Technology Campus is still evolving, the CoreWeave Wind Tunnel wasn’t on song until April and I only joined the team last March, so we’ve started from behind, in truth.

“It’s been a very compressed timescale and an extremely busy 10 months.

“The reality is that we didn’t get a model of the ’26 car into the wind tunnel until mid-April, whereas most, if not all of our rivals would have had a model in the wind tunnel from the moment the 2026 aero testing ban ended at the beginning of January last year.

“That put us on the back foot by about four months, which has meant a very, very compressed research and design cycle.

“The car only came together at the last minute, which is why we were fighting to make it to the Barcelona Shakedown.”

Asked if he was nervous when the AMR26 left the garage for the first time, he added: “Whenever a car is about hit the track for the first time, it’s always a nervous moment.

“The team put in a huge amount of work to get the car ready.

“There’s more to come – and lots to learn – but those first couple of days at the track have been important to start building an understanding of how the car behaves and complete those all-important first systems checks before pre-season testing in Bahrain.”

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