{"id":547438,"date":"2026-03-19T20:02:18","date_gmt":"2026-03-19T20:02:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/547438\/"},"modified":"2026-03-19T20:02:18","modified_gmt":"2026-03-19T20:02:18","slug":"aston-martin-respond-after-reports-state-adrian-newey-has-stepped-down-as-f1-team-principal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/547438\/","title":{"rendered":"Aston Martin respond after reports state Adrian Newey has \u2018stepped down as F1 team principal\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Aston Martin<\/a> have moved to deny reports that Adrian Newey<\/a> has stepped down as their F1 team principal.<\/p>\n

Newey, the F1 design guru formerly at Red Bull<\/a> for 20 years, only took on the team principal role at the start of the year having joined Aston on a \u00a320m-a-year deal<\/a> last March. A report in Autosport <\/a>on Thursday stated that Newey was set to return to a background role focusing \u201cexclusively on technical matters\u201d, with Audi team boss Jonathan Wheatley coming in to replace him.<\/p>\n

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Yet Aston have insisted that Newey remains in his current role, with a spokesperson telling The Independent: \u201cThe team will not be engaging in media speculation about its senior leadership team.<\/p>\n

\u201cAdrian Newey continues to lead the team as Team Principal and Managing Technical Partner.\u201d<\/p>\n

Newey has overseen a dreadful start to the 2026 F1<\/a> season, with Aston\u2019s car blighted by issues related to new power unit provider Honda<\/a>. Drivers Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll have complained about \u201cnerve damage\u201d risk<\/a> to their hands and feet, such is the level of vibrations<\/a> felt in the AMR26 car, and the team are yet to score a point after two rounds.<\/p>\n

Wheatley, who worked with Newey in his role as sporting director at Red Bull, only joined Audi a year ago, in their former guise as Sauber. Audi refused to comment when approached by The Independent.<\/p>\n

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Aston team owner Lawrence Stroll had long targeted 2026 as the season his team would compete for race victories and world championships but, instead, the team are languishing right at the bottom of the championship standings and unable to finish grand prix race distances.<\/p>\n

Newey cut a forlorn figure at the season-opener in Melbourne, as he detailed the myriad of problems the team face at the start of F1\u2019s new era of engine and chassis regulations.<\/p>\n

The 67-year-old divulged that the team could not complete a full race distance and, more worryingly, stated that the violent oscillations of the car were causing harm to the team\u2019s drivers.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe vibration into the chassis is causing a few reliability problems: mirrors falling off, tail lights falling off, all that sort of thing, which we are having to address,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

\"Jonathan<\/p>\n

Jonathan Wheatley worked with Newey for nearly two decades at Red Bull (Getty Images)<\/p>\n

\u201cBut the much more significant problem is that the vibration is transmitted ultimately into the drivers\u2019 fingers. So Fernando is of the feeling that he can’t do more than 25 laps consecutively before he risks permanent nerve damage to his hands.<\/p>\n

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\u201cLance is of the opinion that you can’t do more than 15 laps before that threshold. We are going to have to be very heavily restricted on how many laps we do in the race until we get on top of the source of the vibration.\u201d<\/p>\n

Most recently, onboard footage<\/a> from Sunday\u2019s Chinese Grand Prix showed Alonso having to take his hands off the steering wheel were possible, such was the severity of the vibrations.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was difficult, we found more vibrations than any other session of the weekend,\u201d Alonso said afterwards.<\/p>\n

\u201cPhysically, I could not continue much longer. I started to lose the feeling in my hands and feet, it was not a nice feeling.\u201d Stroll retired earlier in the race, due to a \u201csuspected battery issue.\u201d<\/p>\n

The next round is the Japanese Grand Prix (27-29 March) at Suzuka, Honda\u2019s home event.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Aston Martin have moved to deny reports that Adrian Newey has stepped down as their F1 team principal.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":547439,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[2676,585,49,48,578,3018,576,577,8665,3023,4743,1882,82,2341,11754],"class_list":["post-547438","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-adrian-newey","tag-aston-martin","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-fernando-alonso","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-jonathan-wheatley","tag-lance-stroll","tag-lawrence-stroll","tag-red-bull","tag-sports","tag-team","tag-team-principal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547438","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=547438"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/547438\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/547439"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=547438"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=547438"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=547438"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}