Fernando Alonso and F1 design guru Adrian Newey are hard at work to ensure Aston Martin makes a competitive start to the new era of Formula 1 in 2026.
Aston Martin now boasts the services of Newey after his exit from Red Bull, he and Alonso realising their long-held respective ambition to work with each other. Now that the process is well underway, Alonso said he needs his “full brain capacity” to understand some of what Newey is telling him, while the Brit is running on “five per cent” in those moments.
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Opportunity knocks in a major way for F1 2026, with sweeping changes coming to the chassis and engine regulations. Aston Martin has Newey on its side, an icon of F1 design, having contributed to 26 world championship wins.
The Silverstone squad also has a works engine deal with Honda from next year, as the Japanese brand migrates over from Red Bull.
With Aston Martin, Alonso is chasing a long-awaited third World Championship. F1 2026 will mark two decades since his second and latest title triumph.
As part of an in-house interview, the Spaniard was asked to spill the beans on what it has been like to work with Newey.
“Yeah, he’s an incredible person, the best designer in the history of our sport, and everyone in the team is learning a lot from him,” said Alonso.
“Everything Adrian does, you try to understand why he is doing that, why he chose that direction, or why he’s answering in that way, because there is always something to learn from him. Even from a simple answer that he can give to you in response to a question, that simple answer can be so clear to him, but why is it not for others?
“There are moments when, to be able to understand him, you need to use all your brain capacity. Even if Adrian only uses five per cent, for us, for normal people, we need to use much more. [Laughs.]”
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Alonso was asked to paint the scene of his meetings with Newey. It drew laughter when he was asked if sitting on beanbags, inspirational pictures of Newey’s title-winning cars, and music by Brian Eno feature.
“No, at the moment, our meetings have been very informal and general about the rules,” said Alonso. “We’ve not gone into deep details on something.
“Obviously, he’s curious to know our feelings and our understanding of things. You know, maybe he’s going in one direction and he wants to just tell us how that might impact our way of driving the car, and ask if we had any experience of that in the past and these kinds of things.
“But at the moment, he’s very focused. He’s always in his room, at his drawing board and just focused on delivering results. We will go into more details when the car is in a more developed phase.”
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