Racing
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Adrian Newey has said Aston Martin’s troubled start to 2026 was driven by broken legacy systems, an overweight AMR26 developed under time pressure and health problems that left him below full capacity, with a major upgrade now set for the Hungarian Grand Prix.
In an interview on Aston Martin’s official website, Newey said the team’s car development and build process had been undermined by infrastructure that had been “patched and bodged for years.” He said some of those tools and processes dated back “to the very early days of the Jordan team that was based here in Silverstone,” adding: “At some point, a system that’s just patch-on-patch stops being fit for purpose. That’s where we had got to.”
The consequence, he said, was a “very frustrating car build,” with parts not being ordered at the right time because the underlying system was failing the people using it. That was then compounded by a late start on Aston Martin’s 2026 rules project, difficulties integrating the new Honda power unit and vibration issues that emerged along the way.
Newey admitted the AMR26 is “quite a long way overweight” and said Aston Martin also fell short on its own side in controlling mass. “When you design in a rush, weight is the first thing that suffers because you don’t have the time to thoroughly optimise everything,” he said. He also described the team’s aerodynamic concept as a “bold direction,” largely pushed by him, pursued without enough time to explore multiple ideas in depth. Newey said he does not believe that route is fundamentally wrong, but it has created challenges the team did not anticipate.
He also confirmed for the first time that his health affected the project. Adrian Newey, Aston Martin team principal, said: “I’m okay now, but it’s been a difficult period.” He added: “In truth, I was not 100 per cent last year. I had to balance health and work much more carefully.” Newey said the team “handled it incredibly well,” adding that he maintained a strong relationship with the engineers and did not feel it caused “too much of a blip.”
Aston Martin has brought no performance upgrades through the opening part of the season as it prioritized reliability, and the results have reflected that. The team has scored only one point so far, delivered by Fernando Alonso in Monaco.
That makes the Hungary package central to Aston Martin’s hopes of turning the season. Newey said both drivers will get a substantially redeveloped car at the Hungaroring, the last race before the summer break. The main chassis and gearbox architecture will stay in place, but the team has removed weight from both, forcing a re-homologation and crash test of the forward chassis. The front suspension is unchanged, the rear suspension is slightly revised, and the package also includes a new nose and “substantially revised aerodynamic surfaces.” The target, Newey said, is “to get very close to the weight limit.”
The stakes go beyond performance alone. Newey said Alonso’s willingness to stay with Aston Martin into 2027 will depend heavily on what that upgraded car shows. He said Alonso is “really looking forward to the upgrade” and added that “if it performs we hope he’ll be in the cockpit for another season.” For Aston Martin, Hungary is now more than an update. It is a test of whether the team can show Alonso the “clear, tangible progress” needed to convince him its recovery is real.