By James Broughton, May 20, 2025
I had to do a bit of research—a practice all too rare in modern journalism—driven by my curiosity to discover what Adrian Newey is doing at Aston Martin. He doesn’t need a formal job title; having Adrian Newey involved in your Formula 1 setup is a hallmark of excellence in itself.
Newey is an F1 designer by trade, and the most successful in the sport’s history. He has created so many championship-winning cars that it’s easy to lose count.
The era when a single individual could make a defining impact in F1 supposedly ended decades ago. Today, success is largely the product of teamwork, where the combined efforts of many lead to effective solutions—regardless of the industry. Yet Newey remains a rare exception: one person who consistently makes a tangible difference.
He concluded a highly successful tenure at Red Bull and joined Aston Martin in 2025—no doubt drawn by a lucrative paycheck and new state-of-the-art facilities. He’s already been focusing on designing the team’s 2026 car, set to debut under a new regulatory framework. Newey is a master at identifying grey areas in the rules and exploiting them for competitive advantage, often catching both regulators and rival teams off guard.
However, Newey has identified a weakness in Aston Martin’s current F1 setup: a lack of aerodynamic specialists. No, it’s not Lance Stroll, however, in a recent media interview, he elaborated on this and more.
“One area of our team that needs to grow is the aerodynamics department. But in the short term that means we’ve got to decide which directions are going to be the most fruitful and really concentrate our resources on those.”
“Of course, in doing that, there’s always a danger that we’ve missed an avenue. Quite often, you have to go a long way down a certain branch before you know whether it’s going to be a fruitful one or not.
“It’s sometimes the case that a branch might not start off looking that promising, because it’s very new and underdeveloped, but actually it’s got more fruit at the end.”