Aston Martin has suffered a challenging start to the F1 2025 campaign, but does have one of Formula 1’s greatest designers under its roof.

That being said, team principal Andy Cowell explained that the complete focus of Adrian Newey remains on the F1 2026 regulations to come, rather than a temptation to call on his services to lift their current challenger.

Adrian Newey has eyes on the F1 2026 prize for Aston Martin

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

A team that was regularly climbing onto the podium in 2023, Aston Martin has not made the top three since, with Lance Stroll’s P6 at the F1 2025 season-opening Australian Grand Prix their best result across the four rounds of the campaign so far.

But, this is a team which has enjoyed heavy investment from owner Lawrence Stroll, with future title glory the aim, and a big part of that vision was securing the services of Adrian Newey who arrived in March as managing technical partner.

With Williams, McLaren and Red Bull title-winning car designs on his glittering CV, Newey is looking ahead to the new chassis and engine regulations coming in F1 2026, at which point Aston Martin will begin its engine partnership with Honda.

However, is there a temptation at Aston Martin to ask Newey to help them in the current season, with the team P7 in the early Constructors’ standings?

“100 per cent of Adrian’s designing time is focused on ’26,” Cowell confirmed to the media, including PlanetF1.com, ahead of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.

“He joined in March, so there was a period of him getting up to speed with the regulations, up to speed with the concept work that we’ve been doing in the preceding couple of months. And there are some tough deadlines to meet for releasing monopod details, transmission details, and the cars are running earlier for the ’26 season.

“The test is at the end of January, so getting a car ready for that point requires a slightly earlier decision point. And clearly, everything’s new. There’s zero carryover. So there’s lots of work there, and Adrian has just been focused on that.”

Pressed on whether Aston Martin though see any value in some Newey input on their current car concept, Cowell replied: “There’s value in Adrian understanding the tools that we’ve got, the fidelity of those tools, the precision with which they predict what’s going to happen on the racetrack, yeah.

“I think Adrian’s got a huge amount of experience, and experience in the art of a racing car, which is made up of many systems, you know, whether it’s aerodynamics, kinematics of the suspension, ease of adjustability in a racetrack environment, and also the quality that you should aspire to with regards to aerodynamic surfaces and the robustness of aerodynamic surfaces through a race weekend environment.”

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Stroll’s extensive investment into the Aston Martin team has produced a new factory and windtunnel among the results.

So, having made the move from Red Bull where he went about his work until 2024, Newey’s thoughts on Aston Martin’s facilities were revealed by Cowell.

“Adrian’s hugely complimentary about the campus, and he’s been positive about the [wind]tunnel that we’ve gotten and the way that everything’s been set up.

“He is, of course, though, pushing for us to improve the way we operate in the tunnel, the way we operate with CFD, the way we operate with lapse simulations. So pretty much everything Adrian’s got thoughts on how to improve.

“And that’s the great thing of Adrian’s sort of, competitive drive, and he balances it up very well in terms of, ‘That bit’s fine, it’s this bit that we need to work on’.”

And as for whether this is providing inspiration for how to improve the AMR25, Cowell said: “He’s focused largely on the tools that we’re using, rather than any direct performance aspect for the ’25 car.”

Lance Stroll has scored all 10 of Aston Martin’s points so far in F1 2025, with Fernando Alonso yet to get off the mark.

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