F1 legend Adrian Newey's 'magic' not enough to solve Aston Martin crisis

Aston Martin

Adrian Newey 'magic' not enough to solve Aston Martin crisis

Adrian Newey joined Aston Martin last March

Sam Cook Digital Journalist

Sports Journalist who has been covering motorsport since 2023

Wednesday 29 April 2026 11:59

A former F1 racer has suggested that not even design legend Adrian Newey can turn Aston Martin's fortunes around.

Newey has been with the Silverstone-based outfit since March last year, and had been hoping to turn them into championship challengers as early as 2026 with the wholesale regulation changes sweeping into the sport.

But that has not transpired, and Aston Martin are instead rock bottom of the constructors' championship after three grand prix weekends in 2026 following awful reliability issues.

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Aston Martin's new Honda power unit partnership has got off to a disastrous start, and the Japanese power unit manufacturers are desperately trying to find a solution to their power output and reliability woes.

For Newey - whose car designs have claimed 26 world championships across the years - he is left trying to make marginal gains with the AMR26 chassis while knowing that the car is unlikely to go faster unless the power unit gets sorted out.

Now, former Renault F1 racer Jolyon Palmer has said that Newey's 'magic' will not be enough to turn around the fortunes of the outfit this year.

"100 per cent," Palmer told the F1 Nation podcast about Aston Martin's chances of catching up to their rivals on the chassis side of things. "They have Adrian Newey there, they will catch up with the chassis.

"But the problem is that the power unit is just such a big issue where they have to run it detuned to get any level of reliability out of it, and they're still trying to figure out exactly what's going on, as of Japan, and I don't know how they could've figured that out without putting the car back on the track in the meantime.

"So Adrian can work his magic but it's going to need a lot more than that to get the car into any level of competitive order, that's the problem."

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Can Aston Martin become a midfield team in 2026?

While Honda have no doubt been working hard during the unplanned five-week break in the sport's calendar to try and get rid of some of the gremlins from their power unit design, it has also been revealed that Newey's car design is not without its flaws.

It has been reported that, even with a dominant Mercedes power unit, the AMR26 would likely be scrapping around the midfield with the likes of Alpine and Haas.

But that is dream territory for Aston Martin as things stand, and they will be working hard this year to try and get to that minimum baseline considering what they have spent on the likes of Newey, Enrico Cardile and Fernando Alonso.

Alonso is a two-time world champion who is currently only able to scrap with the new Cadillac outfit at the back of the grid, if he can finish a session at all.

The Additional Development and Upgrade Opportunities (ADUO) period coming up after the Monaco Grand Prix weekend could give Aston Martin a great chance to catch up to their rivals, with it being a safety net put in place at the start of the season by the FIA to help struggling power unit manufacturers.

Even so, there is a long way to go before the team can start finishing races regularly, let alone score some world championship points.

F1 Aston Martin Adrian Newey Jolyon Palmer