Newey’s Aston Martin Role: 2025 Boost & 2026 Vision

Aston Martin F1 secures Adrian Newey to enhance its 2025 car while shaping crucial developments for the 2026 regulatory shift.

Adrian Newey’s arrival at Aston Martin F1 is a major event for the team. The team welcomes one of the greatest engineers in Formula 1 history, if not the greatest, and team director Andy Cowell acknowledges the positive impact of such a recruitment.

“Everyone is very excited to work with Adrian,” said Cowell. “His track record speaks for itself. We look forward to welcoming him on-site, onboarding him as a new employee—it might be a little different—and introducing him to the key technical figures within our company, showing him the commercial tools for car engineering, and then getting to work on creating the 2026 car while contributing to the 2025 improvements.”

Cowell also confirmed that the planned changes are well underway: “As we announced in January, we have made some organizational adjustments to try to flatten the structure and make it more efficient, ensuring communication is strong and fast.”

“And to focus on both track performance and factory development, which I believe is particularly important this year, as we have one set of regulations in their final races before a new set of rules comes into effect for five years.”

“I’ve always found that if you have an engineer thinking about today and 12 months ahead, the focus is always on today. And it’s around four in the afternoon that you start thinking about the following year—by then, your brain is a little tired, or at least mine is.”

The engineering-trained executive outlined his vision for Aston Martin’s restructuring and its benefits: “It’s about properly allocating resources so that entire teams are dedicated to each project. That’s what we’re doing, with an emphasis on individual responsibility.”

“What is our responsibility when we come to work? And to keep it very simple and condensed into just three key responsibilities—crucial ones. That’s the kind of approach I like. I enjoy seeing a focused group of creative people, knowing that their partners are equally focused and delivering excellence.”

“Then, you naturally tend to look in your own direction and do your best. That’s how we try to operate. As always in these situations, it’s about how you aim to work. But is it how you work every single day?”

“We are all human. We have chemical computers, and their emotions fluctuate from day to day in different environments, don’t they? So, we will adapt as we go. But we will strive to ensure that every department performs at its best.”

“Then, we will reflect and improve again and again. We believe this will increase our development rate. If you increase your development rate, you overtake your competitors. And if you keep improving your development rate, you stay ahead of them.”