Formula 1 design legend Adrian Newey says Aston Martin’s new car is “one of the more extreme interpretations” of this year’s new rules.
Newey’s comments came as Aston Martin launched their new season on Monday, in a lavish event in Saudi Arabia that was afflicted by technical problems and revealed only the colour scheme on a generic 2026 car, not the team’s new design.
That was waiting across the King Fahd Causeway at the Bahrain International Circuit, where the second pre-season test begins on Wednesday.
Newey, who joined Aston Martin as managing technical partner in March last year, told BBC Sport: “It seems to be a bit different to some of the other solutions out there.
“A bit like 2022, there’s a new set of aerodynamic regulations, there’s been lots of different interpretations. Whether it’s the right one or the wrong one, only time will tell.”
Rivals have expressed admiration for the new Aston Martin, which tested in an all-black livery for just one of the permitted three days in the so-called ‘shakedown’ test in Spain last month.
Newey admitted that the car was not painted there partly because it was ready so late that the team had not had time to do so.
Teams were allowed to run for three of five days in a week at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, but the Aston Martin was ready in time to go out only late on the fourth afternoon, when it broke down after four laps with Lance Stroll at the wheel. Fernando Alonso then ran for just over 60 laps on the final day of the test.
Mercedes driver George Russell, the pre-season championship favourite, described it as “pretty spectacular” and said it was “probably the most standout in terms of the car design and it looks very impressive”.
Williams team principal James Vowles said it was a “really, really interesting design”.
Newey, who has a reputation for usually being at the leading edge of innovation when new rules are introduced, said: “Because of the very compressed design time, we decided on a direction, a single direction, that we would pursue. And that is what we’ve done.”
Newey joined a team that had already gone through a series of management changes in the past couple of years, while working to bring on stream a new factory, wind tunnel and driver-in-the-loop simulator.
He said the design process of this year’s car, the team’s first as Honda’s engine partner, had been “an incredibly compressed cycle”.
He added: “Overall it’s been very stimulating and invigorating, exhausting at times as well, of course. But what I found was a lot of individually very talented people who weren’t necessarily working that well together. And so that’s what we’ve tried to really concentrate on.”
He said the team had tried to focus on getting the fundamentals right for the start of the season “hoping that that will allow us quite a bit of development potential through the season”.
Aston Martin chose a design museum in Ithra to unveil the car in its latest colour scheme in an event paid for by their title sponsor, the Saudi Arabian national oil company.
But the event started nearly 20 minutes late, and the live stream broke after a further five.