Racing
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Former Ferrari and Mercedes technical chief Aldo Costa says Aston Martin’s difficult start to 2026 is not just a Honda issue but the result of a bigger mistake in how the team integrated Adrian Newey and structured the project around him.
Speaking on the Terruzzi Racconta podcast, Costa said Aston Martin’s new Honda-backed package has already run into “numerous” problems, including vibrations, reliability issues and engine behavior troubles. He argued those setbacks look even more serious because of the scale of the investment made under Lawrence Stroll and the expectations attached to Newey’s arrival.
Costa’s sharpest criticism was reserved for Newey’s public response after Aston Martin’s troubled Australian Grand Prix weekend in Melbourne, when he pointed at Honda. Costa said he had never seen Newey launch such an attack on his own partner so early in a season.
“I'm going to say it openly: it had never happened to me before to find an attack by Newey so inappropriate, carried out in such a violent and public way, right from the start of a championship, against his own partner,” Costa said. “You simply do not do that.”
For Costa, the episode exposed a deeper problem inside Aston Martin than one bad weekend or one engine partner falling short. He said the team’s explanation that it only realized in November, after a trip to Japan, that Honda was using different personnel from its previous F1 project and was behind on power was itself evidence of poor oversight.
“Wow. What? In November? You should have known that well before November,” Costa said.
He argued that proper leadership means shielding the group publicly in difficult moments rather than shifting blame outward. In Costa’s view, a boss cannot take credit for wins and hand responsibility for losses to someone else, and Newey’s comments pointed to “a lack of management, a lack of leadership.”
Costa made clear that his criticism was not an attack on Newey’s technical standing. He said he has “immense respect” and “limitless respect” for Newey’s ability, calling him “probably the most successful person in the history of Formula 1.” But he added that, based on feedback from people who have worked with Newey, his greatest strength is technical, with organizational and managerial qualities slightly behind that level.
That is why Costa believes Aston Martin needs the kind of surrounding structure Newey had at Red Bull rather than treating him as a stand-alone solution. In racing terms, his argument is that the current underperformance says as much about the way Aston Martin is being run as it does about Honda’s early deficits, a worrying sign for a heavily funded 2026 project that is already falling short of its own ambitions.