Aston Martin Managing Technical Partner Adrian Newey has revealed the team bears a significant “handicap” which could blight the development of its 2026 Formula 1 car.
Newey, who is making his first public appearance with the team at this weekend’s Monaco Grand Prix, officially joined-up with the Silverstone-based squad back in March.
The 66-year-old has the challenge of creating his own interpretation of next year’s brand-new regulations, which he descibed as “scary” in a recent interview on the team’s website.
Aston Martin spent a great deal of effort and money to lure Newey into the role, and whilst also calling its facility as “the best” in F1, he is already troubleshooting the issues that might plague its progress towards the front of the grid.
When asked by The Race about Aston’s championship prospects for next year, Newey was frank on the areas it needs to work on.
Asked by The Race at the Monaco Grand Prix about his impressions of Aston Martin and whether he felt it had what it took to fight for the championship next year, Newey said: “I think it is fair to say that some of our tools are weak, particularly the driver in the loop simulator.
“It needs a lot of work because it’s not correlating at all at the moment, which is a fundamental research tool. Not having that is a limitation.
“But we’ve just got to work around it in the meantime and then sort out a plan to get it to where it needs to be. But that’s probably a two-year project in truth.”
Newey expanded further on how and why the specific simulator is currently a loss to the team.
“It is a handicap, but difficult to say how much,” he said, “Driver in the loop simulators are used in two ways.
“One as a research tool, when you’re looking at how you’re going to design the following year’s car, and how you’re going to put all the tools together to better model it.
“Then the other of course is how you develop the set-up of the car, typically, especially for given race weekends.
“So we’re going to be a bit blind on that for some time. We have just got to try to use experience and best judgement. How successful that will be, time will tell.”
Newey: ‘Human element’ key to success
Newey was quick to praise the quality of Aston’s wind tunnel, but, like in the in-house interview, Newey stressed that whilst good equipment is helpful, an F1 team is nothing without the right people.
“The factory is probably the best factory in F1, and the windtunnel is arguably the best windtunnel in F1.
“Windtunnels nowadays are quite complicated tools, so it’s still in a development process. Productivity is not quite there, because we are still kind of working through it.
“But ultimately, windtunnels are a bit like engine dynos. You need them and a really good windtunnel, of course, you’d rather have that compared to a not so good windtunnel.
“But ultimately, it’s not really the thing that makes the difference. It’s the human element. It’s the design you put into it.”
The people at Aston, according to Newey, will need to be utilised the right way for the team to show its mettle.
“There’s a lot of individually very, very good people,” he explained. “We just need to try to get them working together perhaps in a slightly better organised way.
“I think that’s simply a result of, obviously, the roots of the team is Jordan, and that became Force India, and that became Racing Point.
“As such, it was always a small but slightly overperforming team. But now, in a very short space of time, it is a very big team that in truth has been underperforming this year.
“I think a lot of that is now just getting everyone to settle down and learn how to extract the most out of the individuals.”
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