It’s finally official. After months of speculation about his next move, Adrian Newey has a new home on the Formula 1 grid.
Even before he announced his departure from Red Bull earlier this season, Newey was always the name that would be linked with the biggest moves. If you were not winning races and had ambitions of doing so, there was generally one person that you were going to be looking at first.
Does that mean you can’t secure victories and world championships without Adrian Newey as part of your team? Of course not. Mercedes, Ferrari and more recently McLaren have been testament to that over the past quarter of a century, and you can add Benetton to the list if you want to go back more than 30 years.
But that’s how long Newey has been working his magic in F1, and over that time it has been abundantly clear that you have a greater chance of being successful with him as part of your team than without.
The word ‘genius’ can be overused in sporting contexts, but it barely does Newey justice given the cars he has designed and records he has amassed at the likes of Williams, McLaren and Red Bull. There were times that the latter looked like being the final F1 team he would work for, as it harnessed his talents by also allowing him so much time to work on other passion projects.
Yet here we are, with Newey having taken a short break and now committed to trying to design a championship-winning car with a fourth different team. To do so with Aston Martin will be challenging, but even with the team sitting a distant fifth in the constructors’ championship right now, it feels almost inevitable.
The press conference announcing Newey’s arrival was an event in itself, with the drivers and team owner in place for the unveiling of a new technical figure, but it has a ‘cherry on top of the icing on top of the cake’ feel to it.
Aston Martin has invested enormously in its facilities and personnel in recent years, and Lawrence Stroll is leaving no stone unturned when it comes to chasing success. The new factory is no longer described as a ‘factory’ but a campus, with three enormous buildings that are befitting a modern day F1 team.
It’s the first purpose-built facility in nearly a quarter of a century, stretching back to the iconic McLaren Technology Center in Woking. Other teams have also invested and expanded, but to knock it all down and start again is another matter.
The campus has been meticulously planned to be an efficient and cohesive space, but it’s new enough and adaptable enough that Newey can provide his input as to how he will want the design team to be working. And what a team he will have alongside him, with the likes of Dan Fallows and Enrico Cardile standing out as other big-name hires among hundreds since Stroll’s arrival.
“The combination of seeing all the facilities, how nice a feel and how well thought-out the building is, and perhaps most of all, that very visual demonstration of Lawrence actually [being all in],” Newey said. “If I had to describe Lawrence in one sentence, he has total belief, he has a direction, and he’s happy to be put all his chips on black, and that’s what he’s done.”
For Aston, Newey is not the be-all-and-end-all. Some of the talent already in place will have been setting the team up to be a force from 2026 onwards regardless, and with Andy Cowell as chief operating officer – the man credited with Mercedes’ dominant output from its power unit facility in Brixworth – it has some of the brightest minds in the sport to complement perhaps the brightest.
But knitting everything together will not be simple. Newey has his way of working and will need to be given the space to execute it effectively, even among such an array of names. And that’s even before we get onto the immense strength of some of the rival teams, with McLaren and Ferrari ending Red Bull’s dominance and Mercedes still showing signs of its former potential.
You wouldn’t rule out any of the existing top four from setting the benchmark when new regulations are introduced in 2026, but that will be Aston’s big opportunity. With so much of the campus scheduled to be up and running by that stage it won’t be wanting for much in terms of facilities, but Newey’s start date of March next year – just two months from when the teams can start aerodynamic work on the ’26 car – will mean he can have a major impact.
It has long been a strength of Newey’s to be able to exploit the potential in a new set of regulations better than anyone else, as the 2009 rules change highlighted. Red Bull immediately became title contenders and went on to win four straight championship doubles from 2010-13, and then was the dominant force in 2022 and 2023 after ground effect was reintroduced.
Even in 2014, when the V6 turbo power units coincided with a change in car design, Red Bull was the only team other than Mercedes to win races despite an enormous handicap in the form of the Renault power unit of the time versus Cowell’s design. It also returned to winning ways in 2017, despite that ongoing weakness.
The 2026 season will bring enormous change to F1, across both the power unit but also associated aerodynamic regulations. Newey’s recent history with Honda means the new works deal for Aston Martin has every chance of leading to the best possible integration, but he will only have true influence on how the car itself performs, rather than the engine.
Newey really does ensure Aston Martin has all the pieces of the puzzle available to it, and he can set the team in the right direction when it comes to putting it all together. But in a sport that has become increasingly competitive in recent years, it will take everyone involved to even have a chance of delivering a winning car in 18 months’ time.