The team was a latecomer to this year’s shakedown at Barcelona, which Newey said stems back to delays encountered at the beginning of 2025.
Newey said that most of Aston Martin’s rivals had been running their wind tunnels in January, whereas the Silverstone squad was not able to begin until April.
The knock-on effect was the team completing just one of a potential three days of testing at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
“2026 is probably the first time in the history of F1 that the power unit regulations and chassis regulations have changed at the same time,” Newey explained.
“It’s a completely new set of rules, which is a big challenge for all the teams, but perhaps more so for us.
“The AMR Technology Campus is still evolving, the CoreWeave Wind Tunnel wasn’t on song until April, and I only joined the team last March, so we’ve started from behind, in truth.
“It’s been a very compressed timescale and an extremely busy 10 months.
“The reality is that we didn’t get a model of the ‘26 car into the wind tunnel until mid-April.
“Most, if not all of our rivals would have had a model in the wind tunnel from the moment the 2026 aero testing ban ended at the beginning of January last year.
“That put us on the back foot by about four months, which has meant a very, very compressed research and design cycle.
“The car only came together at the last minute, which is why we were fighting to make it to the Barcelona Shakedown.”
Aston Martin returns in 2026 with two-time champion Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll for his 10th season.
Newey stressed that the car that debuted at Barcelona will undergo significant changes between now and Melbourne and even more by the season’s end at Abu Dhabi.
With the new regulations, Newey is optimistic that a move away from the ground effect cars will be beneficial for his drivers.
Newey said it is “very important to keep an open mind” to the development of the AMR26.
“The previous generation of ground effect cars from 2022 to 2025 became quite difficult to drive. The Aston Martin, unfortunately, was one particular example of that,” said Newey.
“With this new formula, we’re trying to make a car that Lance and Fernando can consistently extract a good level of performance from.”
As for the design itself, the Aston Martin drew a lot of attention at the Barcelona shakedown for its bold design.
Asked whether he agreed that it was an “aggressive” design, Newey said it was neither here nor there.
“I never look at any of my designs as aggressive. I just get on with things and pursue what we feel is the right direction,” Newey explained.
“The direction we’ve taken could certainly be interpreted as aggressive.
“It’s got quite a few features that haven’t necessarily been done before. Does that make it aggressive? Possibly. Possibly not.
“We took a really close look at the regulations and what we believe we want to achieve from a flow field perspective to suit them, and from there started to evolve a geometry that attempts to create the flow fields that we want.
“It’s very much a holistic approach — but, in truth, with a completely new set of regulations, nobody is ever sure what the right philosophy is.
“We certainly aren’t sure what the best interpretation of the regulations is and therefore the best philosophy to follow.
“Because of our compressed timescale, we decided on a particular direction and that’s the one we’ve pursued.
“Whether that proves to be the right one or not, only time will tell. But you have to choose your path and get on with it.”
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