The Adrian Newey trick that could make Aston Martin F1 title contenders

A unique quirk of the Adrian Newey way of working has been revealed by Sky Sports F1's Craig Slater, as Aston Martin try to adapt to their new design guru and Team Principal.

Newey joined Aston Martin back in March 2025, but he was not involved in the process to develop the team's car last year, instead focusing entirely on their 2026 machinery, with new rules sweeping into the sport.

Despite now being under the stewardship of design legend Newey whose cars have earned 25 world championship titles through spells with Williams, McLaren and Red Bull, Aston Martin revealed earlier this week they would not be ready to take to pre-season testing until Thursday, leaving themselves just two days in Barcelona.

The private shakedown is a five-day event, before F1 teams are given six more days of testing in February at the Bahrain International Circuit, sessions that will be televised.

Now, Slater has suggested the reason for Aston Martin's car not quite being ready is because of Newey's desire to leave the 'design envelope' open as late as possible, allowing for more tweaks to the AMR26.

"They're having to build the whole rear end of the car which is something they haven't done before," Slater told Sky Sports F1's testing highlights show. "People are telling me this is the adjustment to Adrian Newey's way of doing things.

"He leaves the design envelope open late so parts are referred late, they're manufactured late. I think they will be building the car on Thursday or Friday in the garage still to get it ready.

"But that's the way Adrian works, and you don't hire Adrian Newey and then neglect to do things his way do you, so there's logic."

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Aston Martin building towards championship success

Not only do Aston Martin now have Newey on board in their engineering team, but former Ferrari star Enrico Cardile is also now with the Silverstone-based outfit.

Newey and Cardile are looking to turn Aston Martin into a championship-challenging outfit, although the noise coming out of Aston Martin so far is that they do not expect that to be in 2026.

The team are also starting a new power unit partnership with Honda this year, the power unit manufacturers who enjoyed such a successful spell with Red Bull in recent seasons.

Although they may not be challenging for the championship this year, Aston Martin will certainly hope to be challenging higher up the grid than last year, when they could only finish seventh in the constructors' championship without a podium to their name.

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