Adrian Newey sends warning to F1 rivals as ‘aggressive’ AMR26 design revealed

New Aston Martin team principal, Adrian Newey, has warned his rivals about their AMR26 design ahead of the new Formula One season.

Newey, the former Red Bull Racing Chief Technical Officer, who created multiple championship winning cars for Max Verstappen and Sebastian Vettel is now the head of the iconic car brand.

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He confirmed his resignation from Red Bull in May 2024 after internal team turmoil.

Now he is working with two-time former world champion Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, whose father owns the team.

There has been plenty of speculation around what the genius mind of Newey will produce given his incredible grasp of aerodynamics.

Most famously, Newey built the RB19 in 2023, which is arguably the most dominant F1 car ever made, winning 95.45 per cent of races in a season.

And when Aston Martin finally released the designs of the AMR26 he admitted that, despite praise and intrigue from rivals and pundits, he can’t guarantee his designs are the correct way to interpret the new regulations.

Asked about his vision, Newey said: “We took a really close look at the regulations and what we believe we want to achieve from a flow field perspective to suit them, and from there started to evolve a geometry that attempts to create the flow fields that we want. It’s very much a holistic approach.

“But, in truth, with a completely new set of regulations, nobody is ever sure what the right philosophy is.”

He added: “We certainly aren’t sure what the best interpretation of the regulations is and therefore the best philosophy to follow.

“Because of our compressed timescale, we decided on a particular direction and that’s the one we’ve pursued. Whether that proves to be the right one or not, only time will tell. But you have to choose your path and get on with it.”

Asked if his interpretation is ‘aggressive’ he replied: “I never look at any of my designs as aggressive. I just get on with things and pursue what we feel is the right direction.

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“The direction we’ve taken could certainly be interpreted as aggressive. It’s got quite a few features that haven’t necessarily been done before. Does that make it aggressive? Possibly. Possibly not.”

And in a warning to his rivals, Newey insisted there is plenty more to come from the car in the future as he’s handed more feedback by Alonso and Stroll.

“We’ve attempted to build something that we hope will have quite a lot of development potential,” he said.

“What you want to try to avoid is a car that comes out quite optimised within its window but lacks a lot of development potential. We’ve tried to do the opposite, which is why we’ve really focused on the fundamentals, put our effort into those, knowing that some of the appendages – wings, bodywork, things that can be changed in season – will hopefully have development potential.”

Due to the new regulations, extra tests took place in Barcelona at the end of January, behind closed doors.

And Newey admitted he had a little fear going into the session.

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“Whenever a car is about to hit the track for the first time, it’s always a nervous moment,” he said.

“The team put in a huge amount of work to get the car ready. There’s more to come.

“It’s been important to start building an understanding of how the car behaves and complete those all-important first systems checks before pre-season testing in Bahrain.”