Adrian Newey reveals 'opposite' approach to Aston Martin design

Adrian Newey has revealed to taking an "opposite" approach with his maiden Aston Martin design in a bid to build in "development potential" to a car that could become an F1 championship challenger.

When Newey joined Aston Martin last March as its managing technical partner, he was seen as the final piece of a jigsaw being constructed by owner Lawrence Stroll, who, along with his consortium, has bankrolled the team's bid for title success.

After 19 years with Red Bull, the first Newey-designed Aston Martin rolled out of a garage at Barcelona's Circuit de Catalunya late last Thursday to admiring glances and earning plaudits for the apparent ingenuity in areas of its design.

Although only 65 laps were completed during its cameo appearance at the end of the five-day shakedown, it will now be put through its paces in earnest across the two three-day tests in Bahrain this month.

Whether it will then be competitive straight out of the box in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix in early March remains to be seen. Newey, though, has confidence in terms of how the car will be developed over the campaign.

"We've attempted to build something that we hope will have quite a lot of development potential," he said, speaking in an interview on the Aston Martin website.

"What you want to try to avoid is a car that comes out quite optimised within its window but lacks a lot of development potential.

"We've tried to do the opposite, which is why we've really focused on the fundamentals, put our effort into those, knowing that some of the appendages – wings, bodywork, things that can be changed in season – will hopefully have development potential."

Newey - 'It's simply a title'

Newey will also lean on drivers Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll regarding that development, particularly after witnessing their struggles last season in the complicated AMR25. 

"The previous generation of ground-effect cars from 2022 to 2025 became quite difficult to drive," said Newey. "The Aston Martin, unfortunately, was one particular example of that.

"With this new formula, we're trying to make a car that Lance and Fernando can consistently extract a good level of performance from."

For the first time in his career, Newey heads into a new season as a team principal, after taking up the role in November as Stroll mandated a reshuffle that saw former team boss Andy Cowell become chief strategy officer.

As far as Newey is concerned, "it's simply a title", and despite his decades in the design chair, he is aware of what is required of him.

"The role within the team is to try to provide a direction, an ethos, a culture, that we all work by," he said.

"I try to lead by example, where possible. But really, it’s about developing everybody; we're trying to develop at all levels so that we're working well together, which then means we’ll get the best out of each other."