Aston Martin team boss Adrian Newey has pinpointed structural failings within the company as a primary reason behind its Formula 1 struggles in 2026.
Aston Martin has regularly been rooted to the rear of the field this year amid chassis, gearbox and power unit issues—in conjunction with new partner Honda—and has scored just one point.
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.
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—since when chief trackside officer Mike Krack has fronted up to media.
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“We were relying on tools and processes that had been patched and bodged for years—you 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,” Newey said.
“At some point, a system that’s just patch‑on‑patch stops being fit for purpose. That’s where we had got to. The result was a very frustrating car build. Parts weren’t being ordered at the right time—not because people weren’t doing their jobs, but because the underlying system was failing them.
“You won’t see all the gains immediately, but they’ll be visible on the updated car.”
“We’ve taken this difficult spell as an opportunity to overhaul how we work.
“We’re making big strides in our in‑house facilities and production capabilities. You won’t see all the gains immediately, but they’ll be visible on the updated car: Many more components are now produced in‑house. 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.”
Newey confirmed that the heavily revised AMR26, featuring revised rear suspension, a new nose, and “substantially revised aerodynamic surfaces” will be introduced at the Hungarian Grand Prix, the final round before the summer recess.
“On the chassis side, we’re quite a long way overweight,” Newey confirmed of the current-spec AMR26. “Some of that comes from integrating the power unit and dealing with vibration issues we’ve had to work through with Honda, but we also didn’t do as good a job as we should have on our side at saving weight.
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“When you design in a rush, weight is the first thing that suffers because you don’t have the time to thoroughly optimize everything. Aerodynamically, we also took a bold direction—which was largely pushed by me—without the luxury of exploring multiple concepts in depth because time was against us. I wouldn’t say the direction we’ve taken is fundamentally wrong, but it has thrown up challenges we didn’t anticipate.”
Newey agreed that Aston Martin is “predicting a large step” from its updated car but that long-term problems with the team’s simulation and correlation tools means he is “reluctant to put specific numbers out there.”
“Historically, at this team, there hasn’t been enough investment in engineering simulation tools—not just project management systems, but the core physics tools themselves. We’re putting that investment in now, but you don’t rewrite and validate those tools overnight. Correlating them properly with the real car takes time.”
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.