The signing of Adrian Newey from Red Bull does not guarantee good luck for Aston Martin in F1 2026 and beyond.
That’s the view of a former F1 mechanic, who believes that solving Aston Martin’s progression problems during the season will be on Newey’s to-do list in years.
Newey, the most decorated person in F1 history with over two hundred race victories and a total of 26 drivers’ and constructors’ world championships to his name, announced in September that he would be signing up for Aston Martin in the F1 2025Array.
The 66-year-old has been appointed to the newly created role of managing technical partner, with Newey also becoming an Aston Martin shareholder.
Under the terms of his departure from Red Bull, negotiated by his manager and former F1 team owner Eddie Jordan, Newey will be free to start work with Newey as soon as F1 2025, crucially sidestepping the extended period of gardening leave commonplace in F1 staff contracts.
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As a result, Newey is expected to play a pivotal role in Aston Martin’s arrangements for the new F1 2026 regulations, which will mark the start of the team’s technical partnership with existing Red Bull engine suppliers Honda.
Following a promising 2023 season during which Fernando Alonso collected a total of eight podium finishes, Aston Martin endured a frustrating F1 2024 campaign en route to a distant fifth place in the Constructors’ standings.
The progression of the cars over the previous season proved to be an apparent weakness, and the functionality of the AMR24 chassis faded as the season progressed.
It resulted in Dan Fallows, who previously worked with Newey at Red Bull, leaving his role as technical director and being diverted to another area within the Aston Martin organisation.
Former McLaren mechanic Marc Priestley believes Newey alone cannot turn Aston Martin into a winner despite the team’s encouraging track record and revamped infrastructure.
He told Casino Uden Rofus: “Adrian Newey is a fantastic engineer and has a brilliant mind, but one individual does not guarantee success when developing a new F1 car.
“I’m not saying Aston Martin doesn’t have a wonderful team, but we have seen evidence that they have failed to design a smart car and then expand it during the season.
“Newey joins a team with very limited success, but Aston Martin has just arrived in new factories and the team is developing rapidly. “
In a recent appearance on the Chequered Flag podcast, Alonso pointed to Aston Martin’s use of the Mercedes wind tunnel as a potential factor behind the team’s poor car development.
He said: “It’s not a simple solution or answer because otherwise we’ll probably make it a little less difficult than what we found.
“I think it’s a challenge to perceive the interior of the car a little bit, some of the wind tunnel challenges that Mercedes also faced last year [2023] in terms of progression of the car.
“Our use of the wind tunnel is done in part through the use of the Mercedes tunnel.
“I think a little bit of that comes from one side, a little bit from the wind tunnel, a little bit from us in the factory.
“It is a combination of points that we have contributed to the lack of development. “
Aston Martin technical director Luca Furbatto told PlanetF1. com media at the Italian Grand Prix that the team’s new wind tunnel deserves to be fully operational ahead of the 2025 F1 season.
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