Adrian Newey and Aston Martin redemption is coming and it's all thanks to F1 and the FIA

Adrian Newey is pictured smiling to a backdrop of an Aston Martin car and a Honda engine — Photo: © IMAGO

F1 Analysis

Adrian Newey and Aston Martin redemption is coming and it's all thanks to F1 and the FIA

It's darkest before dawn

Dan Ripley Global Editor

Professional F1 journalist and analyst

Tuesday 23 June 2026 19:59

We all know Aston Martin are terrible and the biggest underperformers of the Formula 1 season so far. Even they would admit that.

But are you ready for Aston Martin becoming title contenders? I don't mean decades from now when none of us are around to see it (but Fernando Alonso will, somehow, still be driving) I mean in a matter of months and, seriously now, while Fernando Alonso will still be driving.

So far Aston Martin have just one point thanks to Alonso creeping into 10th place in a Monaco. You remember? The race infamous for the FIA stewards spamming the penalty button for pitlane speeding whether drivers were going too fast or not (and you can insert your own Aston Martin jokes on that here seeing as Alonso didn't get a penalty).

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There are two main topics for Aston Martin's woes, a woeful Honda engine that almost shook the cars and drivers to bits at the start of the season while being slow, and a rather undercooked chassis from Adrian Newey in his first year with the team.

Horrendous Honda

So Honda have come in and been rubbish. We should have known, they did this with McLaren in 2015 and the Woking outfit got so fed up of slow and unreliable engines they gave up on the agreement after just three years.

Their loss was Red Bull's gain who having watched Honda work with Toro Rosso in 2017 agreed to partner with them a year later. By 2021 Max Verstappen was world champion for them, and Honda influence also helped his next three world titles.

Honda power fired Max Verstappen to his first world title in 2021

Now I know you've done the maths here. Six years? That's ages in F1. Aston Martin have a bit of fortune though because this time it's different and Honda can catch up much quicker.

This is thanks to the new F1 rules around ADUO (additional development and upgrade opportunities) that unlike in 2015 when Honda were hampered by much stricter engine development restrictions, ADUO now gives engine manufacturers big chances to catch up.

You can read more about ADUO here, but the FIA have judged Honda's engine to be at least 4 per cent slower than the benchmark Red Bull power unit, and thus have two development tokens for the rest of 2026 and two for 2027. Red Bull for the record have none, so the catch up opportunities are there. Now the vibration issue is solved there will be lots of potential to now make it faster.

FIA ADUO Analysis
Engine	Teams	Upgrades
Red Bull Powertrains	Red Bull, Racing Bulls	Benchmark
Mercedes	McLaren, Williams, Mercedes, Alpine	One Upgrade
Ferrari	Haas, Cadillac, Ferrari	Two Upgrades
Audi	Audi	Two Upgrades
Honda	Aston Martin	Two Upgrades

The end game of this of course is that eventually there is going to be a far reduced gap in performance between engines across teams so there will be a far bigger performance focus on chassis and car design. This is where Aston Martin are sitting pretty.

Adrian Newey is just getting started

There is some surprise in that while Honda's engine has been a major talking point, Newey's chassis isn't all that either. Newey himself admitted at the start of the season that with average Honda power, the team would still only be looking at the top 10 in a race.

This is an extraordinary admission from the man who has penned dominant title winning cars for Red Bull, McLaren and Williams. But he has very good excuses.

Adrian Newey turned McLaren into winners in 1998 after arriving in 1997

His arrival last April meant that Aston Martin were already three months behind their rivals in designing their 2026 car for the radical new rules in F1. You can't cut corners to make up that time. F1 has the most efficient and slickest teams around. Not even Newey is going to find three months worth of time to catch up that period.

Aston Martin have had their own problems since moving into their new factory, with a major story in 2025 being their wind tunnel giving off incorrect data. So not only had Newey walked into a project running late, it was also providing useless information - what a combination!

Newey spent much of 2025 trying to actually get Aston Martin running properly, his first car for them in these circumstances was never in a month of Sundays going to be a world beater.

When will Aston Martin get faster in F1?

Right now, it's a total mess at Aston Martin. Neither Alonso nor Lance Stroll can stand their slow and unreliable car, and for the next few races it's going to stay that way.

That's because Newey has decided to play the long game and ignore rushing upgrades to try and save face. Instead until the summer break it's going to be a slog in Austria, Great Britain, Belgium and Hungary.

It will look like a hopeless effort, but the team will be learning plenty during these four races before a raft of upgrades arrive at the Dutch Grand Prix after the summer break.

Don't rule out Aston Martin being quick after this period. McLaren's 2023 is an excellent example of how a team can go from near the back to earning a cluster of podiums inside a season. McLaren looked hopeless in the first third of 2023 with just 17 points, but ended the season with 302 after monster upgrades following the eighth round at the Canadian Grand Prix.

McLaren 2023 Formula 1 Season
Team	Points (GP 1-8)	Points (GP 9-16)	Points (GP 17-22)	Total Points	Championship Position
McLaren	17	155	130	302	4th

The sky remains the limit for Aston Martin, and even if the summer's upgrades are not quite McLaren-2023 good, the real Newey project has only just started.

A combination of Lawrence Stroll's money, a genius designer in Adrian Newey and the technical expertise from proven winners Honda means it is only a matter of time, and not a lot of it, before Aston Martin start becoming serious challengers. You've got your warning.

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Written by

Dan Ripley - Global Editor

I've been a massive F1 fan since the mid 1990s and continue to study the history of the sport long before that. As an experienced motor sport reporter covering F1, MotoGP and the LeMans 24 Hour race, being part of GPFans has allowed me to work with a diverse team with all sorts of different backgrounds in watching the sport and given me a greater appreciation of F1.

View full biography

F1 FIA Aston Martin Fernando Alonso Lance Stroll Lawrence Stroll