Aston Martin late to start, but Newey putting faith in its development potential

Adrian Newey says Aston Martin was late to the Barcelona shakedown because it started from behind its rivals with its 2026 car, but that he was still pursuing new features on the AMR26.

Aston Martin first rolled out of the garage in Spain late on Thursday of the shakedown week, getting five laps in before making use of the final day of running. The car is the first produced by Aston Martin since Newey – who is now also team principal – joined last year, and he says he had to maximize every opportunity for development given the position the team was in 12 months ago.

“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,” Newey told the team’s website. “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."

The front suspension geometry and rear packaging on the AMR26 has caught the eye of rival teams already this pre-season, but Newey says he sees different solutions as required based on the overall approach to the car.

“We took a really close look at the regulations and what we believe we want to achieve from a flow field perspective to suit them, and from there started to evolve a geometry that attempts to create the flow fields that we want. It’s very much a holistic approach … but, in truth, with a completely new set of regulations, nobody is ever sure what the right philosophy is.

“We certainly aren't sure what the best interpretation of the regulations is and therefore the best philosophy to follow.

“Because of our compressed timescale, we decided on a particular direction and that's the one we've pursued. Whether that proves to be the right one or not, only time will tell. But you have to choose your path and get on with it.

“I never look at any of my designs as aggressive. I just get on with things and pursue what we feel is the right direction. The direction we've taken could certainly be interpreted as aggressive. It's got quite a few features that haven't necessarily been done before. Does that make it aggressive? Possibly. Possibly not.”

Newey praised the team’s designers for the way they responded to his demands for a “much more tightly packaged” car than Aston Martin has ever produced, but says there will still be a significant amount of change to it prior to the first race of the season.

“We've attempted to build something that we hope will have quite a lot of development potential.

"What you want to try to avoid is a car that comes out quite optimized within its window but lacks a lot of development potential. We've tried to do the opposite, which is why we've really focused on the fundamentals, put our effort into those, knowing that some of the appendages – wings, bodywork, things that can be changed in season – will hopefully have development potential.

“The AMR26 that races in Melbourne is going to be very different to the one people saw at the Barcelona Shakedown, and the AMR26 that we finish the season with in Abu Dhabi is going to be very different to the one that we start the season with. It's very important to keep an open mind.”