Adrian Newey explains the reasons for delay of Aston Martin taking the track in Barcelona shakedown, as he expands on F1 2026 season.
The AMR26 only made it to the track on Day 4 of Barcelona shakedown to start their F1 2026 season. They managed about five laps with Lance Stroll and followed up with 61 on Day 5 with Fernando Alonso. The delay to the track was caused by delay in the start of the project basically.
In an UNDERCUT interview with Aston Martin, team boss Newey explained that the delay can be traced back to April when the AMR26 went live on the CoreWeave WindTunnel. When F1 rivals had their cars in the wind tunnel from January 2025 already, the team was delayed by nearly four months on that.
The new wind tunnel started functioning from April onward, which is when they went live with the AMR26. They were already on backfoot and had to do a year’s work in under 10 months to be ready in January 2026. Despite the drop, they managed to get it all together to run in Barcelona.
Newey expanded on the tightly packed design, which is new for Aston Martin. He notes that he didn’t wish to make the car as aggressive as it looks, but it just so happens that it is like that. He isn’t sure the philosophy they took is the right one, but they have adopted it anyhow.
But Newey was firm that the design that everybody saw in Barcelona will not the final one, even to start the year in Australia, leave alone the finale in Abu Dhabi. There is huge potential of development work to be undertaken as the year progresses, where he will have to take up the team principal work too.
Here’s what Newey said –
Regs interpretation, aggressive or not –
Newey: “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.”
Tight package –
Newey: “Yes. The car is tightly packaged. Much more tightly packaged than I believe has been attempted at Aston Martin Aramco before. This has required a very close working relationship with the mechanical designers to achieve the aerodynamic shapes we wanted. But I have to say that all the mechanical designers here have really embraced that philosophy. It hasn’t made their life easy, quite the opposite, but they’ve really risen to the challenge.”
Timeline, delay –
Newey: “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. 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.”
Development, potential –
Newey: “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 optimised 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.”
Team principal role –
Newey: “I became a Team Principal towards the end of last year. In many ways, to me, it’s simply a title. The role within the team is to try to provide a direction, an ethos, a culture, that we all work by. I try to lead by example, where possible. But really, it’s about developing everybody; we’re trying to develop at all levels so that we’re working well together, which then means we’ll get the best out of each other.”
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