Red Bull F1 testing disaster sends Adrian Newey warning

There is a lot of talk about Aston Martin this year and quite rightly so considering this will be an F1 car from the team designed on Adrian Newey's watch.

Some of it has been negative, with Aston Martin confirming they will not be testing the car until Thursday and Friday in just a two-day run at Barcelona when the majority of the teams will do three.

But there have been mitigating arguments to this too, with suggestions that Aston Martin are hanging out the development window as much as possible and that has caused their late entry into testing.

As such the wait to see just how good Newey's first Aston Martin could be is one of the biggest subplots of pre-season testing. But there are a couple of things to look at.

How good are Adrian Newey cars after a rules reset?

It's mostly success. After joining McLaren in 1997, Newey's first car for the team came in when F1 cars became narrower and saw the introduction of grooved tyres (slicks with lines cut through them to reduce grip and slow cars down). Having not won a title for seven years, McLaren ended the 1998 season with a drivers' champion in Mika Hakkinen and as constructors' champions.

In 2009 and now at Red Bull, the team had a similar boost in performance when slicks were brought back and F1 cars were radically redesigned to have skinny rear wings and huge front wings. Under Newey, Red Bull launched from mid-table to championship contenders under Sebastian Vettel. Newey does lose points here though as he missed out on the double diffuser trick that helped eventual champions Brawn dominate the first half of the season and limp over the line during the second part, with Jenson Button as drivers' champion.

The 2022 season was also the start of the ground effect-era and Red Bull went from being neck-and-neck with Mercedes to outright dominating the sport, winning all but one of the 22 races of the 2023 season.

You may have noticed I skipped the 2014 rules reset for the start of the hybrid era when Red Bull went from domination, including winning the last nine races of the 2013 season, to being very distant runners-up to Mercedes. Yes this happened under Newey's watch too but there is an important factor here.

Newey the workman can blame his tools

There was good news for Red Bull ahead of the 2014 season, Newey had designed an excellent chassis that would once again be one of the best on the grid. However, outside of Newey's influence was the Renault engine in the back of the Red Bull, and it was bad... really bad.

Not only was it slow, it was unreliable and given Mercedes had torched the field with their hybrid powerunits, Red Bull's title defence looked all over even before the first race had been run after a catastrophic testing session where stopping on track became normal for Vettel.

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Where does this leave Newey and Aston Martin?

Aston Martin are looking to finally move up from mid-table where aside from a purple patch at the start of 2023, they have lingered since their 2021 debut.

Chances are Aston Martin have built a decent chassis then if Newey has anything to do with hit, so ignore the talk about the car being late etc. In terms of Aston Martin's problems, that's a red herring. The issue could come with Honda.

Honda are back in F1 and you may remember the last time they came back into the sport they helped McLaren become one of the slowest and unreliable teams back in 2015. I say this because the initial sounds coming out of Honda on their return are not good.

One Honda chief even said: "Of course, if we are going to compete, we are committed to winning. However, the 2026 regulations are technically extremely challenging, and perhaps we will struggle."

Hardly words of encouragement, but it is a word of caution. Even if Newey has nailed the regulations for Aston Martin, if Honda don't deliver a decent engine then there is no magic wand Newey can wave to give Fernando Alonso or Lance Stroll a title winning car.

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