'Fear of failure' pushing Newey to maximize 2026 Aston Martin F1 design

Adrian Newey admits he has been in something of “a design trance” since joining Aston Martin as managing technical partner, as he focuses on the 2026 Formula 1 regulations.

Aston Martin secured Newey’s services from Red Bull last year, with the legendary designer starting working with his new team in early March of 2025. Newey says he has been focusing on the opportunities provided by the new rules that will come into effect next year, and trying to use any pressure of needing to deliver for Aston Martin in a positive fashion.

“Some of the motivation is that fear of failure,” Newey said. “I’ve tried to learn to use that constructively, because it’s that difference between too much pressure or pressure mismanaged causing mistakes vs leading to quite a focused and tunnel-vision like state.

“My wife, over the last three or four months since I joined the team, complains that I’m in a design trance. And I understand what she means, that I don’t kind of see left and right, and I’m probably not terribly sociable. What limited processing power I have is all concentrated on the task at hand, given these pressing deadlines.

“But that’s not a state to stay in for too long. And that all sounds quite egotistical, as well. It’s really, ultimately, all about the team and how we work together.”

At a time when Aston Martin is understood to be restructuring its technical department – with a number of personnel from the design and aerodynamics teams moving off F1 projects to other areas of the business – Newey says the way the entire organization works together is the key factor for future success.

“We are a team of around 300 engineers. Collaboration, of course, is the most important single aspect," he said. "In many ways, more than individual talents within the organization, it’s how we all work together [and] make sure that we communicate and we extract the most from each other.

“For me personally, what does that mean? Well, it means I spend probably around 50% of my day at the moment working with the other engineers, either at a 1-to-1 level, gathered around the CAD station, or in meetings.

“I generally, if I’m honest, prefer the former, because I think the 1-to-1 meetings are quite often where you can do the brainstorms. The big meetings, if you’re not careful, become procedural information exchanges, without actually coming up with new ideas, which is, of course, the important bit.

“So, you need a mixture. We’re under intense pressure for deadlines to get the major architectural parts of the car – which is the gearbox, followed by the chassis, the front suspension, the rear suspension, etc. – released in time for testing in January.

“In truth, probably spending a bit more time than I would like, about 50% of my time, at the drawing board looking at the computational fluid dynamics, the vehicle dynamics programs. etc., and trying to make sure that we’re coming up with a concept that we’re all happy with. I never want it to not be with everybody’s involvement and buy-in.”