Aston Martin have started the 2025 season in very disappointing fashion. Poor results have largely overshadowed the team’s medium-term potential, which remains bright thanks to marquee signings like Adrian Newey.<\/p>\n
Newey began working at Aston Martin in early March, immediately starting work on the 2026 regulations<\/a>.<\/p>\n Whilst upgrades to the AMR25<\/a> are imminent, the majority of the resources at the team’s Silverstone factory are being diverted to the new regulations.<\/p>\n There are few engineers or designers who command the respect of someone like Adrian Newey, whose track record in Formula 1 is arguably second to none.<\/p>\n It is because of this that Aston Martin were only one of several teams trying to secure his signature.<\/p>\n Ferrari were among those attempting to secure the 66-year-old’s signature, before he ultimately committed himself to Aston Martin.<\/p>\n In the immediate aftermath of signing Adrian Newey, there was understandable excitement at the team.<\/p>\n Newey’s arrival compliments the new factory campus, wind tunnel and simulator that have become operation at the Silverstone outfit.<\/p>\n All these ingredients, combined with Honda’s engine supply<\/a> in 2026, could make Aston Martin a force to be reckoned with.<\/p>\n Of course, the team’s current challenger – the AMR25 – does not benefit from any of these things.<\/p>\n As a result, Aston’s long-term potential has largely been overshadowed by their current predicament.<\/p>\n Formula 1, like any results-based business, operates on actual performances – rather than hypothetical potential.<\/p>\n This puts immense pressure on Aston Martin’s next update package<\/a> – which will be the first designed with the new wind tunnel.<\/p>\n Simultaneously, Aston’s poor start to 2025 has given Adrian Newey’s recent statements additional layer of significance.<\/p>\n Newey outlines the work already taking place towards 2026, in addition to his observations of the new regulations.<\/p>\n It was only four years ago that Red Bull<\/a> and Max Verstappen<\/a> began to assert themselves in the 2022 Championship.<\/p>\n The Austrian outfit would benefit immensely from Newey’s understanding of ground-effect cars.<\/p>\n This resulted in Red Bull developing a baseline concept that gave them a significant advantage over their rivals.<\/p>\n Although expecting the 66-year-old to create a similar advantage in 2026 is perhaps too optimistic, Newey has spoken optimistically about what the next generation of F1 has to offer:<\/p>\n “My thoughts on the ’26 regulations are similar to what my thoughts were about the big regulation change for 2022 – initially thinking the regulations were so prescriptive, that there wasn’t much left here [for a designer].<\/em><\/p>\n “But then you start to drill into the detail, and realise there’s more flexibility for innovation and different approaches than first meets the eye.<\/em><\/p>\n “We saw that at the start of 2022, with teams taking really quite different directions.<\/em><\/p>\n “Now, of course, four seasons on, they’ve largely converged, but initially that wasn’t the case.<\/em><\/p>\n “Variation between teams is great. It’s all a bit boring if the cars look identical and the only way you can tell them apart is the livery.<\/em><\/p>\n “I think there’s a high probability that in ’26 we\u2019ll see something similar to ’22.<\/em><\/p>\n “There’s enough flexibility in the regulations, and I’m sure people will come up with different solutions.<\/em><\/p>\n “Some of those will be dropped over the first two or three years as teams start to converge.”<\/em><\/p>\n Main photo: Aston Martin media gallery<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Aston Martin have started the 2025 season in very disappointing fashion. Poor results have largely overshadowed the team’s medium-term potential, which remains bright thanks to marquee signings like Adrian Newey. Newey began working at Aston Martin in early March, immediately starting work on the 2026 regulations. Whilst upgrades to the AMR25 are imminent, the majority […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4927,"featured_media":33747,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[820,1566,2452],"class_list":["post-33744","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-formula-1","category-news","tag-adrian-newey","tag-aston-martin","tag-f1-2025-season"],"modified_by":"Jaden Diaz-Ndisang","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33744","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4927"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=33744"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33744\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":33799,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/33744\/revisions\/33799"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/33747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=33744"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=33744"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=33744"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Aston Martin under pressure to live up to their potential<\/h2>\n
Newey finds new ideas within the 2026 regulations<\/h4>\n