When Adrian Newey opted to move from McLaren to Red Bull in 2006, it was the biggest leap into the unknown of his career.
Aside from his entry into F1 with March, Newey’s CV had so far been filled with two of the sport’s biggest hitters. Patrick Head pounced to add Newey to an already talented Williams technical team and Ron Dennis was able to prise away the man whose cars had dominated the last seven years of the sport.
So in 2006 and when an entirely unproven project owned by an energy drink came calling, it took one of Newey’s former colleagues to convince him to join – David Coulthard.
Newey’s desire for a move away from the “stale” McLaren was Coulthard’s in and soon enough, the Scot had convinced Newey to make the same leap of faith that he had done a year previously.
The rest, they say, is history but now Newey is facing another new challenge, and another attempt to build a championship-winning team from the ground up.
Aston Martin at least are a few steps further down the path than the early years of Red Bull. For a start, this team has been racing in some form or another since 2019. Last year they opened a state-of-the-art facility next to the Silverstone circuit and they represent one of the world’s most recognisable car companies.
They have enjoyed a taste at the top though. Aston Martin’s ability to catch everyone but Red Bull sleeping at the start of 2023 propelled the newly arrived Fernando Alonso to eight podiums and the 280 points collected was the most the team had achieved in a season since Lawrence Stroll took over.
In theory then, and with a Honda works partnership coming in 2026, everything is set up for another era of success for Newey and the possibility of adding even more title-winning cars to his 12-strong collection.
And yet, nothing is ever that easy. Aston Martin’s form since the midpoint of 2023 will be as concerning as the start of the season was inspiring.
When the first round of major upgrades took place, Aston Martin found themselves not only upgrading slower than their rivals but also going backwards in terms of the pace they started the year with.
That problem has continued into 2024, with the team operating in a no man’s land of P5. Way off the top four and more likely to be looking behind instead of ahead.
Now with Newey signing on the dotted line, there are legitimate questions to be answered.
First things first, Aston Martin must solve their correlation issue. The Silverstone outfit are not the first to suffer from unreliable data but for every week that goes by that the problem is not resolved, the harder it will be to catch those ahead.
This does not of course fall into the remit of designer Newey, but his experience will be beneficial in bringing a team up to title-winning standard.
The next question is what does Aston Martin look like post-Fernando Alonso? Newey’s Red Bull exit does not officially come until March 2025, meaning the first car he will work on in full will be 2026’s challenger – the final year of Alonso’s current contract which he penned in April.
The arrival of Newey will give Alonso a fresh determination to continue as his pursuit for that third world title goes on but come the end of 2026, the Spaniard will be 45 and even the seemingly ageless Alonso will surely show signs of his years then.
So who comes next? Honda’s arrival has made an obvious link with the Honda-backed Yuki Tsunoda but it remains to be seen what kind of driver talent they could entice as well.
Alonso was in a unique situation of Alpine looking to have their cake and eat it when it came to his and Oscar Piastri’s future, meaning Aston Martin could swoop in, but will they be able to attract another driver of that calibre?
To do that, they will need to come flying out of the blocks in 2026, which could well happen given Honda’s dominance in the current regulation but, if they get off to a slow start, then they may find it harder to get the top level drivers around the negotiating table.
More on Adrian Newey
2026 is another key target for Aston Martin. In Adrian Newey they may have the best individual mind but as a technical team, can Aston beat the likes of McLaren, Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari? As we saw in 2022, new regulations can act as a reset and it was Newey’s team who discovered the best formula – 2026 will show if it was Newey or the combined efforts of the Red Bull design team that achieved that.
The changes in 2026 are also dramatic in terms of the impact it will have on the sport. The ICE has been reduced to sharing responsibility with an elongated battery. A brand new power unit has seen plenty of the expensive parts stripped away and six different suppliers are currently penned to be on the grid. Honda may well do it again but until that first race, there is no way to know who really is on top.
And then of course there is the question that has followed Stroll Snr since he got into the racing business – his son.
Criticism of Lance Stroll has often been harsh and misplaced. Yes he is a pay driver but of the drivers with that tag, he is one of the better ones. He won F3 the season before he was propelled up the motorsport ladder. He is the second youngest driver to ever race and is 37th in the list of all-time point scorers. He also has a pole position to his name and three podiums.
So Stroll is no slouch, the problem is the question of whether he is good enough to compete in a team that has ambitions for the title.
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