How a Honda engine and a torrid start turned Aston Martin’s grand project into the toughest brief of the designer’s life

Adrian Newey’s cars have won a dozen Formula 1 constructors’ titles across more than three decades. None of that pedigree has stopped the one he is running now from sitting near the bottom of the grid.

When Aston Martin lured Newey away from a decade of success elsewhere, the logic looked airtight. Hand the sport’s most decorated designer a clean sheet of regulations, a works Honda engine and Lawrence Stroll’s budget, and a front-running car would follow. Six races into 2026, the car sits near the back, and the trouble has turned out to be something Newey cannot simply draw his way out of.

The job is bigger than any he has held. For the first time in his career, Newey is leading a team rather than only designing for one, having added the title of team principal to his managing technical partner role over the winter. The man who shaped champions at three different teams now owns the whole operation, at the moment it is struggling most.

The root of it has been the power unit. Aston Martin began the year as a full Honda works team for the first time, and the engine arrived with severe vibrations (rapid shaking through the car that the drivers feel directly). The shaking was bad enough that Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll could not complete long runs early in the season without risking pain in their hands, and Newey had warned both cars might not finish the opener in Australia. The vibrations have since been controlled, but the deficit they left has not closed.

What followed was a season that exposed a fresh flaw almost everywhere it went. Alonso has pointed to engine trouble in the early rounds, gearbox issues in Miami and Monaco, and an aerodynamic shortfall in Japan, with chronic understeer (the car running wide because the front tyres lose grip mid-corner) surfacing in Monte Carlo. Only the newcomers at Cadillac sit below Aston Martin in the constructors’ standings, and Stroll props up the drivers’ table.

The single bright spot came in Monaco, where Alonso inherited tenth and the team’s first point of the year after penalties ahead of him. Even that was heavily qualified. Alonso said there were zero positives from the weekend beyond the score, and David Croft argued that, given the money and expertise on hand, the point was nothing to celebrate.

The recovery is real but slow, and not all in Newey’s hands. He is holding major upgrades to the AMR26 until Honda can supply an improved engine for both cars at once, and it is unclear whether that step will be ready for the Belgian Grand Prix, still several rounds away. Until then Alonso and Stroll must manage through Barcelona, Austria and Britain with a package everyone knows is short.

This is what makes it the hardest task of his career. Newey’s genius has always lived in aerodynamics and mechanical layout, the areas a designer controls. An engine from a partner that effectively rebuilt its programme after withdrawing at the end of 2021 is not something he can redraw, and lifting a team off the floor is a slower art than penning a quick car. The faith inside Aston Martin holds, and the pedigree says he gets there eventually. What 2026 has shown is that even the finest designer in the sport cannot win a fight being lost under the engine cover, and that is unfamiliar ground for Adrian Newey.

Thumbnail: By courtesy of Pirelli