Aston Martin team principal Adrian Newey says he has produced a more ambitious design than the team has previously attempted.<\/p>\n
The AMR26 is the first car the team has produced since Newey joined them. He was originally appointed as managing technical partner and took on the role of team principal at the end of last year.<\/p>\n
The new car caused a stir when it appeared for the first time in pre-season testing last week. The AMR26 is noticeably slimmer in places than rival designs. Newey acknowledged the design is \u201cmuch more tightly packaged than I believe has been attempted at Aston Martin\u201d previously.<\/p>\n
\u201cThis has required a very close working relationship with the mechanical designers to achieve the aerodynamic shapes we wanted,\u201d said Newey<\/a>. \u201cBut I have to say that all the mechanical designers here have really embraced that philosophy. It hasn\u2019t made their life easy, quite the opposite, but they\u2019ve really risen to the challenge.\u201d<\/p>\n Every other team bar Williams ran its new car for the 2026 season before the new Aston Martin appeared on the fourth day of last week\u2019s test. Newey said the team was rushing to complete the car in time for the first test of the season.<\/p>\n \u201cThe reality is that we didn\u2019t get a model of the \u201926 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,\u201d he explained.<\/p>\n \u201cThat 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 [test].\u201d<\/p>\n Advert | Become a RaceFans supporter and go ad-free<\/a><\/p>\n