Terrible start
The arrival of Adrian Newey as the new designer for Aston Martin, combined with significant investments by Lawrence Stroll for the 2026 season, had raised high hopes for this world championship, with the Silverstone team powered by the new Honda power units after the conclusion of the partnership with Mercedes. Instead, at least in these first three rounds, the team’s performance has been disastrous: only Fernando Alonso managed to complete a race in the Japanese GP, but finishing only in 18th place. A result that highlighted the lack of competitiveness of the AMR26 and the Japanese engines, in a start to the championship also characterized by controversies over the vibrations suffered by the drivers inside the cockpit.
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Just an engineer
There is also a non-secondary aspect, which focuses on Adrian Newey: the latter, in addition to holding the role of designer, has also been Team Principal of the team, with the role expected to pass into the hands of Jonathan Wheatley after his brief experience at Audi. Former driver Juan Pablo Montoya spoke about Newey as a manager, expressing himself this way to Casinostugan: “In Spanish we have a saying: ‘If you are a shoemaker, keep making shoes’. Adrian is an engineer and should focus on that. He is good at designing cars, he is not a team principal. So, I can understand if they hire Jonathan Wheatley. Adrian is an engineer, he doesn’t deal with politics. He is not there to manage the press. He shouldn’t deal with sponsors. His only goal should be to make the car faster, which is what he excels at. He simply needs to focus on the basics”.
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Evident problems in many aspects at Aston Martin, but Montoya himself believes in a recovery for the team, convinced that improvements can be seen already during this world championship: “The funny thing is that I still believe they will surprise everyone once all the problems are solved. I really think they will have a quite competitive car once all this s*** is settled. It will take them longer, but I believe Aston will surprise us and I believe they will surprise us this year”.
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