Adrian Newey has offered a perhaps unusual reason for taking on the responsibility as Team Principal for Aston Martin in Formula 1 next year.
The famed technical guru has agreed to lead the Silverstone-based squad next year, juggling trackside operations as well as his natural role as the team’s designer.
Newey will replace current Team Principal Andy Cowell, who has been shuffled into the position of Chief Strategy Officer.
It will be the first time that Newey has assumed a Team Principal position, having earned the kudos and respect of the paddock as a technical director, designing a plethora of championship-winning machines across the previous three decades.
But there appeared to be little fanfare from the man himself, who told Sky Sports F1 ahead of this weekend’s Qatar Grand Prix that taking on the responsibility will come with little extra work.
“To be perfectly honest, it became very evident that, with the challenge of the ’26 PU and Andy’s skillset in terms of helping the three way relationship between Honda, Aramco and ourselves, it is absolutely his skillset,” he said.
“So he very magnanimously volunteered to be heavily involved in that through the first part of ’26.
“That left a kind of, ‘OK, who’s going to be TP?’ And since I’m going to be doing all the early races anyway, it doesn’t actually particularly change my workload, because I’m there anyway, so I may as well pick up that bit.”
Newey ‘determined’ to not let new duty be a distraction
Newey, upon officially joining Aston Martin in March, was able to immediately begin work on the team’s 2026 car, with little to no input on its 2025 machine, which has ultimately flattered to deceive across the campaign as a whole.
It has appeared that the team have opted for the mentality of ‘short-term pain, long-term gain’ by allowing Newey to fully focus on 2026, a car that will be tackling the sport’s new technical regulations.
But despite his insistence that being Team Principal will make little difference to his schedule, he added that he is “determined” to remain focused on his bread and butter.
“That’s really what I want to and need to do,” he said. “That’s what gets me out of bed in the morning. So I’m determined not to dilute that.”
Newey’s words appear to be pointing towards an eventual reality of Aston viewing his Team Principal role as a stopgap, with this resuffle perhaps being a precursor to a bigger one.
His former Red Bull colleague Christian Horner, still said to be itching to get back into F1, was touted as a potential replacement for Cowell, with ex-McLaren boss Andreas Seidl also in the running.
Perhaps both men, along with fellow rumoured contender and former McLaren alumni Martin Whitemarsh, are still in the frame to some day soon be entering the F1 paddock drapsed in green.
READ MORE – Fernando Alonso reacts to Aston Martin appointing Adrian Newey as F1 team boss from 2026
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