Adrian Newey’s Admission of Guilt
On the eve of the Silverstone weekend, Adrian Newey finally broke the silence explaining the reasons for the most spectacular and unexpected flop of the 2026 Formula 1 season. The team principal and technical director of Aston Martin recounted the shock of discovering that the problems were also chassis-related and not just linked to poor integration with the Honda power unit and gearbox, also talking about his health difficulties that he has now finally put behind him and the expectations of Fernando Alonso ahead of the upgrade package expected to debut at the Hungarian GP weekend in Budapest. Cited by The Race, the aerodynamics genius did not deny feeling guilty for having done everything on his own without giving too much importance to the opinions of his drivers.
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The Guilt Towards Alonso and Stroll
“For Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll it must have been extremely frustrating – explains Adrian Newey – not being able to race competitively due to all the problems we have had, both in terms of reliability and performance. I felt obliged to explain to both Fernando and Lance exactly what we are doing, what we have planned with the upgrade package and what our plans are for the 2027 season. Even if it may not seem so, we are trying to listen very carefully to their comments and trying to act accordingly. Also because, if people don’t feel heard, obviously they feel very frustrated. It’s a human reaction, so maybe part of our fault was not dedicating enough time to Fernando and Lance, and to Jak Crawford, to explain exactly what we are trying to achieve”.
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Adrian Newey and Emergency Decisions
“We were behind on the learning curve – he adds – but it soon became clear that we would not be competitive in the first races. That is why we made the painful but I believe right decision not to focus on development for the entire first half of the year, knowing that this would mean the gap to the front would actually increase, since everyone else meanwhile improved their cars. The goal, however, was to organize ourselves better, putting in place many different systems for the future and conducting our research properly, since the 2026 car was designed and built in a very short time frame. This allowed us to take a step back, lighten the pressure on ourselves a bit, because I think we put too much on ourselves during the winter, and take a deep breath to really understand our problems”.
The steps for the near future are instead very clear in the English engineer’s mind: “We hope to have the upgrade package ready in Hungary as the first phase, with a second part on track in Zandvoort. I had classified it as medium term, but now obviously it is short term, but there are also long-term decisions, which will put us in a stronger position during the next winter and the 2027 season”. “However, I thank everyone for their patience and understanding, because it is very painful for us and for everyone, including our partners, to see our current performance, but we hope that soon this will become a distant painful, still painful, but distant memory”, concludes Adrian Newey.
