{"id":770892,"date":"2026-06-30T23:27:40","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T23:27:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/770892\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T23:27:40","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T23:27:40","slug":"adrian-newey-explains-why-aston-martin-is-struggling-in-formula-1","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/770892\/","title":{"rendered":"Adrian Newey Explains Why Aston Martin Is Struggling in Formula 1"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aston Martin team boss Adrian Newey has pinpointed structural failings within the company as a primary reason behind its Formula 1 struggles in 2026.<\/p>\n

Aston Martin has regularly been rooted to the rear of the field this year amid chassis, gearbox and power unit issues\u2014in conjunction with new partner Honda\u2014and has scored just one point.<\/p>\n

Its decision to hold off on bringing chassis updates until it can bring one large upgrade has left it cut adrift at the back in recent grands prix.<\/p>\n

In a wide-ranging in-house interview produced by Aston Martin, ahead of its home grand prix in Britain this weekend, Newey provided his viewpoint for the first time since the opening event in Australia\u2014since when chief trackside officer Mike Krack has fronted up to media. <\/p>\n

\"auto<\/p>\n

ANDREJ ISAKOVIC\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were relying on tools and processes that had been patched and bodged for years\u2014you could trace some of them right back to the very early days of the Jordan team that was based here in Silverstone, long before Aston Martin returned to the grid,\u201d Newey said.
<\/p>\n

\u201cAt some point, a system that\u2019s just patch\u2011on\u2011patch stops being fit for purpose. That\u2019s where we had got to. The result was a very frustrating car build. Parts weren\u2019t being ordered at the right time\u2014not because people weren\u2019t doing their jobs, but because the underlying system was failing them.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou won\u2019t see all the gains immediately, but they\u2019ll be visible on the updated car.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019ve taken this difficult spell as an opportunity to overhaul how we work.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe\u2019re making big strides in our in\u2011house facilities and production capabilities. You won\u2019t see all the gains immediately, but they\u2019ll be visible on the updated car: Many more components are now produced in\u2011house. The gearbox casing is manufactured here, the floor patterns and floors themselves are made here, and a lot of parts that were previously outsourced have come back in-house. That gives us better cost control, but more importantly, much greater flexibility and control over our own destiny.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newey confirmed that the heavily revised AMR26, featuring revised rear suspension, a new nose, and \u201csubstantially revised aerodynamic surfaces\u201d will be introduced at the Hungarian Grand Prix, the final round before the summer recess.<\/p>\n

\u201cOn the chassis side, we\u2019re quite a long way overweight,\u201d Newey confirmed of the current-spec AMR26. \u201cSome of that comes from integrating the power unit and dealing with vibration issues we\u2019ve had to work through with Honda, but we also didn\u2019t do as good a job as we should have on our side at saving weight. <\/p>\n

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Clive Mason\/\/Getty Images<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you design in a rush, weight is the first thing that suffers because you don\u2019t have the time to thoroughly optimize everything. Aerodynamically, we also took a bold direction\u2014which was largely pushed by me\u2014without the luxury of exploring multiple concepts in depth because time was against us. I wouldn\u2019t say the direction we\u2019ve taken is fundamentally wrong, but it has thrown up challenges we didn\u2019t anticipate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newey agreed that Aston Martin is \u201cpredicting a large step\u201d from its updated car but that long-term problems with the team\u2019s simulation and correlation tools means he is \u201creluctant to put specific numbers out there.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cHistorically, at this team, there hasn\u2019t been enough investment in engineering simulation tools\u2014not just project management systems, but the core physics tools themselves. We\u2019re putting that investment in now, but you don\u2019t rewrite and validate those tools overnight. Correlating them properly with the real car takes time.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Lettermark\"<\/p>\n

U.K.-based Phillip Horton started covering Grands Prix while still at university and swiftly deemed that writing about Formula 1 and the behind-the-scenes machinations was much more engaging than reading centuries-old novels. Degree gained, he went on to cover the sport full-time from 2014 and is as intrigued and excited by the destinations Formula 1 visits during its lengthy annual world tour as the racing itself. Phillip joined Autoweek in 2021 and while he has just about learned to spell in American English he has yet to find anywhere in America that makes a proper cup of tea.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aston Martin team boss Adrian Newey has pinpointed structural failings within the company as a primary reason behind…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":770893,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,428,366338,430,817,813,816,308081,2387,366337,366213,85,233947],"class_list":["post-770892","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-content-type-news","tag-contentid-140fb4d9-155e-4b27-8f98-44f41760d597","tag-displaytype-standard-article","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-issyndicated-false","tag-locale-us","tag-shorttitle-newey-explains-aston-martins-f1-struggles","tag-sponsored-false","tag-sports","tag-subsection-formula-one"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770892","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=770892"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/770892\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/770893"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=770892"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=770892"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=770892"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}