Aston Martin risk 'world of pain' as F1 insiders highlight the dangers of Adrian Newey plan

Adrian Newey, Aston Martin, Bahrain, 2026 — Photo: © IMAGO

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Aston Martin risk 'world of pain' as F1 insiders highlight the dangers of Newey plan

Aston Martin are counting down to their major F1 upgrade, but could it do more harm than good?

Kerry Violet F1 News Editor

F1 editor and journalist covering motorsport since 2024.

Thursday 16 July 2026 09:50

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Aston Martin and their F1 team principal Adrian Newey could be risking a 'world of pain' with their upcoming upgrades package according to insiders of the sport.

The Silverstone squad have struggled at the back of the pack for much of the 2026 campaign, even trailing at times behind newcomers Cadillac.

But Newey's team and their power unit providers Honda are looking to put the less than ideal start to the new regulations era behind them when they introduce a major upgrades package in the coming weeks.

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Aston Martin currently sit second from last in the constructors' championship with just a single point to their name thanks to Fernando Alonso, but they are hoping to turn over a new leaf when they bring their first upgrades of the year at the Hungarian GP.

Newey confirmed prior to the squad's home race last time out that the package should see a significant reduction in weight along with some crucial aerodynamic changes, with the summer break then giving the team time to reflect on the shift before introducing a new engine at the Dutch GP in late August.

However, some experts have warned that Newey is gambling with his first set of upgrades with Aston Martin, suggesting it could backfire to put the team even further off course than before they were introduced.

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In an episode of the High Performance Racing Podcast, host Jake Humphrey raised the question over whether Aston Martin would still be significantly behind the curve due to their monumental upgrades meaning they will have to get to grips with what is almost a brand new car.

"They're surely at that point only going to have the knowledge that the other teams would have had in Melbourne," said Humphrey, to which co-host and former Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer replied: "For me there’s a bit of a corollary to what you're saying.

"If you bring a massive upgrade like that and it doesn't perform like all your tools have said it should perform, then suddenly you've got correlation issues.

"And then you've put all your eggs in that basket with correlation issues. And now you’ve got to start looking at your tools so that next time you bring something that actually correlates to making it go faster.

“And if you bring upgrades piecemeal and they don't quite correlate, you start working on those correlation issues much earlier so that your next upgrade does actually work. And that to me is a risk. And they have a new tunnel.”

Ex-Ferrari race engineer engineer Rob Smedley weighed in, agreeing with Szafnauer that Newey's upgrade plan for Aston Martin was a risky one.

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Smedley said: "It is a risk. It's a brand new tunnel. Brand new group almost. The whole of the aero group, brand new, a lot of guys migrated across from Red Bull. New simulator. New simulation tools. So, there's a lot of new stuff there."

Szafnauer then interjected again, saying: "If you bring upgrades every once in a while, you can prove out your tools while you're putting the upgrade on the car. You get that feedback," something Aston Martin won't be able to do when they introduce their upgrades package all at once.

Smedley explained why this could be such a pain for Newey's squad, warning: "But if this doesn't correlate, if they have a correlation issue, that will be a world of pain for them because you’ve then got to go back and understand what you're doing and therefore you get out of sync with the car in the tunnel and the car on the track because you've then got to go back because don't forget by the time the B-spec car hits the ground in Hungary, the car in the tunnel will be another three, four, five races ahead.

"So then you’ve got to pull back on that model. You’ve got to go back and you’ve got to figure it out. It's just a world of pain."

Attempting to pull the conversation back towards a more positive outcome for Aston Martin, Szafnauer then used his position as a paddock insider to reveal: "It could very well correlate. I’ve heard they're adding 70 points of downforce. 70 is 2 and a quarter second-ish, right? 30 is a second, 60 is 2 seconds. 2.3 seconds of lap time.

"So say that 2.3 is 1 and a half. And then you're thinking, why isn't it…” Szafnauer trailed off on his explanation before Humphrey joined the conversation again to point out that even finding a few seconds of lap time still wouldn’t put Aston Martin among the competitive teams on the field.

Keen to end on a high, Szafnauer stated that the improvement would make Aston Martin ‘more competitive' than at least the Cadillacs. Not quite what Newey had in mind I imagine.

Written by

Kerry Violet - F1 News Editor

Having graduated from the University of Sheffield with a 2:1 in Journalism in 2022, Kerry continued her pursuit of finding a full-time position in motorsport through work with the F1 Arcade in London, where she got to meet true fans of the sport and make a live grand prix watch party memorable for them. It was here that she confirmed her dream of combining her background in journalism and love of motorsport, going on to volunteer with the female-led platform Empoword Journalism. Having completed stints as a screen editor and sports editor, Kerry landed her first F1-specific editorial role with GPFans and has thoroughly enjoyed continuing to work closely with the sport ever since. The access GPFans offers Kerry has allowed her to interview big names such as Naomi Schiff and David Coulthard and given her experiences she could only have dreamt of as a young F1 fan.

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F1 Aston Martin Adrian Newey Otmar Szafnauer