If you’re looking for optimism at Aston Martin, you won’t find it in the headline results.
The big-spending team had great hope in 2023, when it rocketed from seventh to fifth in the constructors championship with a 500 per cent increase in points.
With the wily Fernando Alonso as lead driver, the team seemed sure to join the grandees.
But it hasn’t.
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In fact Aston Martin has slid only backwards — slumping from 280 points in 2023 down to just 94 last year, and halfway through this season it’s scored just 36 points.
But the team’s 2025 result isn’t the point. While its sharp competitive decline has been cause for concern and triggered a shake-up in its technical team, its massive investment in recruitment and infrastructure has always been targeted at the rule changes of 2026.
In that fight Aston Martin has a not-so-secret weapon in Adrian Newey.
Newey is one of Formula 1’s most legendary designers. Over a decades-long career the Englishman’s chassis have been responsible for 12 constructors titles and 14 drivers championships.
More than the stats, however, is the reputation.
Every team he joins wins the title.
He penned his first CART title-winning car only six years out of university.
Williams won the title double in 1992 in just his second year at the team.
He joined McLaren in 1997, and the team won both titles in 1998.
His 2006 switch to minnow Red Bull Racing yielded victories in 2009 and the championship in 2010.
But the opposite is also true. Every team he leaves ends up in the doldrums.
Williams hasn’t won a title since Newey left.
McLaren won only one championship — in 2008, in the immediate aftermath of Newey’s departure — in the almost two decades between him leaving and last year’s drought-breaking constructors title.
Red Bull Racing now faces that same fate.
Newey announced his shock decision to quit the team last May, in the aftermath of the allegations made against Christian Horner and subsequent public political turmoil that engulfed Milton Keynes. He was also said to be unhappy with the way his impact on the team’s performance was downplayed to boost others in the technical department.
Sergio Pérez identified Newey’s resignation as the team’s turning point last year, with RBR declining so severely that Max Verstappen won the drivers title in a car good enough for only third in the constructors championship.
This year it’s out of contention for both championships, and Verstappen at least appears uncertain about its competitive prospects, with communication lines open to Mercedes about a potential switch.
But if it’s bad news for one F1 powerhouse, it’s great news for an aspiring grandee.
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RED BULL RACING’S LOSS
Newey joined Aston Martin as managing technical partner last year, not only placing him at the head of the design office but also giving him skin in the game with a minority shareholding in the team.
He started work this year, and immediately his inclusion at Silverstone has delivered improvements.
“Having Adrian join us since March, firing up the drawing board and the machine that is required downstream of that, has just added some extra impetus to what we’re doing for 2026,” Aston Martin team principal Andy Cowell told the F1 website.
“He packages 10 things into the space where only one would normally fit, and all the engineers see that as a challenge. It’s not just the engineers, it’s the whole group of people within the aerodynamics development area.
“The pace with which we’re creating changes on the 2026 wind tunnel model is quicker than we’ve ever done before. It really is very impressive. It is like watching 100 people all run 100 metres in sub 10 seconds with perfect baton passes.
“It’s very exciting to see, and all of that is enabled by having the facilities and the people and the methods.”
Newey is part of a dying breed in Formula 1 of designers who have an especially broad understanding of how a car works owing to his tenure in the sport. Technical departments were much smaller in his early days, requiring him to be across more of the car and how it works.
It makes him particularly valuable, and Aston Martin is thriving on his input.
“Adrian is an amazing individual,” Cowell continued.
“He’s got great experience, but the thing he loves is being at the drawing board thinking about the design of a racing car.
“And it’s not just one part on the racing car, it’s the whole system.
“Since March he’s spent hour after hour after hour at his drawing board just thinking about suspension concepts, the monocoque, where to put the engine, how to position the driver — all those detailed architectural aspects of the race car.
“He’s creative and adventurous and he pushes the boundaries — and so everybody’s got less volume to fit more components in, and that inspires the engineers. They look at it initially and go, ‘How am I going to do that?’. But they are finding ways, and Adrian helps with that.
“He doesn’t just give a problem; he helps giving detailed solutions as well, and the whole supply chain in there in the factory is enjoying working on that.”
Ahead of arguably the biggest rule changes in Formula 1 history, it’s a crucial gain for Aston Martin — and a painful loss for Red Bull Racing.
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IMPROVEMENTS ALREADY IN 2025
Work on the 2026 car commenced in January, but Newey wasn’t able to start at Silverstone until March owing to the non-compete clause in his Red Bull Racing contract.
The 2026 car was therefore his priority, the team keen to maximise his value where it might be most keenly felt.
But Newey is having a broader effect than just on the 2026 design.
“We had a couple of lunches together generally [focused on] things about the team, about the simulator, how to make things a little bit more realistic,” Alonso said, per the F1 website “He has a lot of experience [of] how a top team should fight for championships and try to be on top of the game in every area.
“It’s not only the aerodynamics. When we think about Adrian it is all aero performance; I think Adrian has a much wider view of how the team should operate, so we all learn from him every time that we speak with him.”
So it’s perhaps unsurprising to see Aston Martin get an almost immediate lift in performance with Newey in the mix.
Aston Martin started the season in uncompetitive form as the eighth fastest car on average, though in three of the first six rounds it was only ninth fastest, and at one weekend — in Miami — it was the outright slowest car based on qualifying pace.
Average gap to pole, season to date
1. McLaren: 0.034 seconds
2. Red Bull Racing: 0.268 seconds
3. Mercedes: 0.345 seconds
4. Ferrari: 0.444 seconds
5. Williams: 0.791 seconds
6. Racing Bulls: 0.843 seconds
7. Alpine: 0.969 seconds
8. Aston Martin: 1.031 seconds
9. Haas: 1.211 seconds
10. Sauber: 1.401 seconds
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But an upgrade brought to the first European round of the season, the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, has dramatically improved the team’s fortunes.
That weekend was its most competitive by pure pace up to that point, the car clocking in as the fifth fastest.
But the trend only improved from there. It headed the midfield again in Canada, and it was the closest it’s been to pole all season last time out in Silverstone.
Its gap to pole has shrunk considerably in the last six races, moving it to the head of the midfield.
Average gap to pole, rounds 6 to 12
1. McLaren: 0.054 seconds
2. Red Bull Racing: 0.346 seconds
3. Ferrari: 0.480 seconds
4. Mercedes: 0.487 seconds
5. Aston Martin: 0.836 seconds
6. Racing Bulls: 0.902 seconds
7. Williams: 0.903 seconds
8. Alpine: 1.078 seconds
9. Haas: 1.193 seconds
10. Sauber: 1.359 seconds
The championship table demonstrates as much. The team has scored 22 of its total 36 points since applying the upgrade.
“Lunchtime conversations [with Newey] have not just included what he’s eating or what he’s been doing at the weekend,” Cowell said earlier this year, per RacingNew365. “They have included conversations about the 2025 car and what might be the issues.
“As he has been working on the 2026 car, he gets to see the tools that we’ve got, specifically the CFD, the wind tunnel and the whole journey of information from drawing board to wind tunnel results.
“With that we learn about what are strengths are, what our weaknesses are and then how we maintain our strengths and improve our weaknesses.
“He’ll see the way we operate in a race weekend environment, the way we optimise the car. Having his experience and insight, he’ll be looking to see what is going well and what is not.
“It just helps with our jobs and lists of what to work on to become a stronger team.”
Newey’s arrival is well timed beyond simply being in place for next year’s regulations.
Aston Martin has only recently cut the ribbon on its new factory, including its state-of-the-art wind tunnel and other design machinery.
This sort of infrastructure doesn’t simply start pumping out more performant parts; it must be calibrated, and the team must come up with policies and techniques that make the most of them and to ensure correlation with real life.
Cowell suggested Newey and has been able to bring new perspectives to that process, which has had a positive effect on this year’s car.
“He is … pushing for us to improve the way we operate in the tunnel, the way we operate with CFD, the way we operate with lap simulations — so pretty much everything Adrian’s got thoughts on how to improve,” he said, per The Race.
“And that’s the great thing of Adrian’s competitive drive — and he balances it up very well in terms of, ‘That bit’s fine, it’s this bit we need to work on’.”
We can see the improvements in the development rate, which is calculated by drawing a line of best fit through Aston Martin’s average gap to pole position through the season to date.
Development rate
1. Aston Martin: improved by 0.295 seconds
2. Haas: improved by 0.177 seconds
3. Sauber: degraded by 0.028 seconds
4. Ferrari: degraded by 0.119 seconds
5. McLaren: degraded by 0.125 seconds
6. Red Bull Racing: degraded by 0.315 seconds
7. Mercedes: degraded by 0.392 seconds
8. Alpine: degraded by 0.407 seconds
9. Racing Bulls: degraded by 0.619 seconds
10. Williams: degraded by 0.696 seconds
With a big upgrade due at this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix, these numbers could yet improve further.
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ASTON MARTIN’S BIG 2026 BET
Newey, then, has already had a hand in transforming Aston Martin’s outlook. A story of seemingly unending decline, with update after update having no effect on performance, has been halted and reversed. Things are looking positive again.
It’s just in time for 2026, with the team having long targeted the regulation changes as a catalyst to vault it back among the frontrunners, this time sustainably.
The Aston Martin team has already gone through significant change, moving to a new factory and welcoming myriad new staff to Silverstone.
Next year it will take the considerable step of becoming the Honda works team, switching away from Mercedes power.
While the Honda partnership was sealed in 2023, having Newey at the head of the technical department will only strengthen that relationship, the Englishman having worked with the Japanese brand since 2019.
The deal theoretically improves Aston Martin’s prospects. While McLaren proved last year and is proving again this year that engine customers can win titles, the advantage of having an in-house power unit tends to be most significant at the start of a regulatory era.
Cars and engines can be designed in tandem to ensure both sides can get the most from themselves. The team can make requests of the engine manufacturer and vice versa to ensure a perfect fit.
There’s more pressure too, though. Honda is supplying only Aston Martin, meaning it will gather far less data on the performance of its new motor than other brands that supply several teams.
“It is a transformation going from a customer team to a works team at the same time as all the regulation changes and the new factory and all the new equipment,” Cowell told the F1 website. “It’s a huge transformation for everybody in our team.
“But I’m really impressed with the enthusiasm that everybody’s got.
“Everybody’s open-minded to making changes in the way we work in responsibilities and so on.”
Combined with having two-time champion Alonso in the cockpit for at least one more season, Aston Martin has never had more of the right pieces in the right places.
And the biggest pieces, its biggest gain, comes directly at Red Bull Racing’s expense.