Hire Christian Horner and fix Adrian Newey: The Aston Martin farce has gone on long enough

Horner, Newey, Aston Martin, socials — Photo: © IMAGO

F1 Analysis

Hire Horner and fix Newey: The Aston Martin farce has gone on long enough

Adrian Newey should never have been made team principal

Sheona Mountford F1 Journalist

Motorsport journalist working in F1 since 2024.

Friday 24 April 2026 10:57

Remember the start of the year when all Aston Martin would post were cryptic black and white edits? There'd be Adrian Newey with a ruler or other pieces of STEM paraphernalia, his eyes twinkling into the camera like the lead from a bygone Howard Hawks picture.

By design. You could almost hear the breathy voiceover more suited to a fragrance ad than a Formula 1 team. It wasn't just Newey that got in on the act. Ahead of their launch they even invoked the voice of Kaya Scodelario and the image of a cellist to promote the AMR26; a 'score shaped by intention. Deliberate in every note.'

The kids reliably inform me that this is called 'aura-farming'. Ferrari did a lot of this in 2025 when they welcomed Lewis Hamilton to Maranello, and we all know how that panned out...

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So, when Aston Martin arrived late to Barcelona without a lick of paint on their car (it's by design) and tanked to the bottom of the timesheets in Bahrain, the dramatisation of the AMR26 was laughable.

You can see what Aston Martin were going for. Newey was supposed open doors into the big leagues, placing their legendary marque right at the top where it belongs alongside automotive giants Ferrari and Mercedes.

But then, when they arrived in Melbourne reporting vibrations that meant even finishing the race was impossible, well the laughter subsided, out of sheer belief that it all went so terribly wrong.

Newey's a genius! How could he design a car that bad? Had Lawrence Stroll just wasted millions on signing the design legend? But don't worry. It's not Aston Martin's fault or Newey's. It's Honda's. It's their engine causing the vibrations. We didn't know how bad it was at Sakura until it was too late.

Herein lies Aston Martin's main problem. By framing Newey as a pseudo-deity - who only he alone could make Aston Martin champions - the team made the fatal error of putting absolutely everything on their star attraction, instead of focusing on uniting the whole entity.

F1 is a team sport and in the excitement of signing Newey, Aston Martin forgot just that. They also forgot that sometimes, they may also have to pay attention to what Honda were getting up to as well.

What's next for Stroll Sr, Newey and Aston Martin?

If there was a tiered list of to-dos for Aston Martin it should go like this:

1. Learn some patience
2. Hire the best available people to work at Honda
3. Remove the team principal title from Adrian Newey and hire someone like Christian Horner or Jonathan Wheatley

Will these three points turn Aston Martin into a championship-winning team overnight? No. Will it turn Aston Martin into a championship-winning team within a year? Also no.

But the correct measures need to be taken now, to ensure any chance of future success.

The first to-do applies to team owner Lawrence Stroll. There is no sum of money that can purchase Aston Martin's way to the top now. They tried that by hiring the best designer F1 has (perhaps ever) to offer, and it didn't guarantee instant success.

Could Newey's project one day materialise into something spectacular? Certainly, if his Red Bull career is anything to judge by. Newey had his work cut out for him in his first few years at the team, until in his fourth year the car finally became competitive (albeit during the new regulations cycle in 2009).

Newey has previously admitted that when he arrived at Aston Martin, it reminded him of Red Bull when they were still rebuilding after the Jaguar years, particularly in regards to the atmosphere within the team, describing it as 'deja vu'.

So Stroll Sr. has to trust that, even though it may take considerable time, the Aston Martin-Honda project could start to gel.

Again, however, this isn't going to change overnight. Stroll Sr needs to invest in the right personnel at Honda, who Aston Martin need to work closely alongside, to ensure they embark down the right path. Together. Not as two separate operations at Silverstone and Sakura.

Another concern at present isn't just the issues themselves at Aston Martin, but also the noise their misery is generating. They need someone equipped to deal with this side of the business, and Newey's skillset is just not optimal in this area.

To get a person, who allegedly had to be kept in check and reined in by various teams throughout his career, to design the car, deal with the staff, speak to the media and do whatever else it is a team principal does in modern day Formula 1 is ludicrous.

Because right now, letting Newey loose on the media - as happened in Melbourne and laid the blame entirely at Honda's door - made Aston Martin appear ill-managed, disjointed and as frantic as a hen-house. Even if that is the reality, they need someone who can smooth over those cracks, put a smile on their faces and give a frank but assured account of what's happening to the press a la James Vowles.

Of course, Newey is still key to this project as the head of the design room, but Aston Martin do need to admit their team principal experiment went wrong and build a support network around the 67-year-old Englishman, say by hiring someone more used to dealing with people and the media (cough Horner, cough Wheatley).

Even successful squads such as McLaren and Mercedes realised their team principal cannot succeed alone. Toto Wolff and Andrea Stella will both have someone to support them in the form of Bradley Lord and Gianpiero Lambiase - and that's two bosses well suited to the team principal role.

To not extend the same support to Newey and claim everything's fine, would be the biggest head-in-sand moment since a certain ostrich went on their first beach day.

What about Alonso and Stroll?

While it's all very easy for us to sit here and dictate that Aston Martin should be patient, it's an entirely different story for Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll. The Canadian admittedly has more time on his side to wait and see if Aston Martin become competitive, but less so Alonso.

At the age of 44, it's difficult to gauge how much patience the two-time world champion has left in him. On the one hand, retirement could veer round the corner at any second. On the other, however, his age proves his longevity and his desire to continue - and remain competitive - in the sport until he has the chance of fighting for a title.

But these title winning years feel like a distant fantasy, especially after making such a monumental blunder at the start of the new era. And it means Aston Martin will almost certainly lose out on what could have been the biggest signing in their history. Max Verstappen.

In their current guise, Verstappen isn't wasting a second at Aston Martin. And by the time the team are ready to win races, who knows if the four-time champion will even be in the sport?

F1 HEADLINES: Verstappen tipped for transfer, Red Bull sale talks revealed

Written by

Sheona Mountford - F1 Journalist

Sheona Mountford is a motorsport journalist specialising in F1. As a writer and contributor, she covers a wide range of motorsport series from F1 to F1 Academy, responsible for breaking news, live race coverage and in depth analysis of the sport and the culture around it.

View full biography

F1 Aston Martin Adrian Newey Fernando Alonso Lance Stroll Honda