Newey and Honda combining forces: How Red Bull’s power couple became Aston Martin’s problem

Written by Bo Helmus, Edited by Benjamin Crundwell

After having signed the ‘world’s greatest Formula One designer’, and a championship winning engine supplier, it would seem that Aston Martin has all the components to be a serious contender for wins in the 2026 F1 season. But is it really such a happy marriage as everyone expected?

Adrian Newey is having trouble to get pace out of his AMR26 | Credit: Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team via X 

Lawrence Stroll made headlines when he got Adrian Newey to commit to his team. As of March last year, the Brit was relieved of his ‘gardening leave’ period and so he started working on the 2026 challenger. He got to design his car around the Honda power unit, another new addition to Aston Martin. 

The last car that Honda powered was the RB16B, also designed by Newey. Max Verstappen won the World Championship with this combination of forces. Aston Martin signing both should mean that it would be a huge success, shouldn’t it? Well, at this point, it seems more like a reason for divorce. 

New regulations

The reason why Newey hasn’t built the quickest car on the grid yet seems to be because of the completely new rulebook. As of the 2026 season, the Fédération Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) decided on new regulations that are “agile, competitive, safer and more sustainable”. Cars have to be lighter, carry an improved power unit and incorporate new aerodynamics. 

The AMR26 at the car launch | Credit: Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team via X 

Teams are forced to create completely new designs, obeying completely new rules. This makes the sport more exciting to watch, as the last generation of cars was completely out-improved upon. 

The new regulations means that all designers need to go back to the drawing board and build a new car from scratch. Everyone tries to find loopholes to make their contender go faster, and the budget cap creates an even playing field. 

This should make this season very exciting to watch, as the gaps are small and the new aerodynamics allow closer racing. Fans are looking forward to it, but designers are racking their brains to make their car as quick as possible. 

Newey explains why that is more difficult than previous years: “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. It's a completely new set of rules, which is a big challenge for all the teams, but perhaps more so for us.”

The 2026 cars look different from the previous generation | Credit: Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team via X

Wind tunnel problems

Aston Martin was expected to do big things, but with what we’ve seen in testing so far, they are contending for last place rather than first. Newey reveals one of the reasons they are behind in an interview with UNDERCUT: “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.”

Wind tunnel testing is an important part of designing the car. “The reality is that we didn’t get a model of the '26 car into the wind tunnel until mid-April,” explained the Brit. “Whereas 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,” Newey continues.

“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.”

Adrian Newey explains why Aston Martin is four months behind schedule | Credit: Formula 1 

First test under the Spanish sun

Aston Martin managed to show up to the Barcelona Shakedown, but they arrived a day late. The AMR26 did 206 laps over two days, the least of any team. Alonso was the fastest driver for the team from Silverstone, but he only set the seventeenth time over-all. 

The Spaniard was almost four-and-a-half seconds slower than the time of Lewis Hamilton, who topped the timing sheets. Lance Stroll came in dead last, 30 seconds off the pace. 

The Canadian told the reporters of Formula 1: “Right now, we look like we’re four seconds off the top teams, four-and-a-half seconds. Again, it's impossible to know what fuel loads and everything people are running. Now we need to try and find four seconds of performance, so we’ll see.”

So far, it doesn’t look too promising for the team in British racing green. To be fair, testing doesn’t mean too much, as Stroll mentioned.  Teams run different setups and use a technique called sandbagging, where they hide their car’s true pace to mislead competitors. 

The first look of the AMR26 on track | Credit: Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team via X 

True show of pace

With all eyes on Bahrain testing, Aston Martin should have performed better, but the AMR26 didn’t seem any better. On day one, Stroll was 5.2 seconds off the leading time. Alonso closed the gap to 3.9 seconds on the second day, but on day three the team couldn’t hang on to this rising line. 

After the first week of testing, Stroll was asked what he thought of the team’s performance: “We’re still learning the car, the engine, but we have a lot of work to do, and catching up to do,” he said. “We have probably 400 less laps than the competition, [from] Barcelona and everything that we missed.”

The second week of testing showed few improvements, if any. Alonso started the first day strong with a lap only 2.5 seconds behind the leaders, but dropped back to 4.6 seconds on day two. 

The AMR26 is still unreliable. Stroll’s car lost drive, which caused him to spin out of the second session and his Spanish teammate suffered battery-related issues. 

Stroll says: “We just have to keep pushing. It is what it is. I mean, we just focus on where we are and what we can improve on going forward, and that’s all we can do.”

The Aston Martin is 4.5 seconds slower than the leader | Credit: Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team via X

Stroll continues: “Time will tell how much performance we can extract from it. We have the issues that we have, we’re trying to improve it every run, every day, and we’ll see how much more we can extract from the car.”

Alonso is positive and has complete faith that the car will improve: "He [Newey] has the experience. He has been in better times, tougher times, and I think we have a clear path of improvement,” he said in an interview with SkySports. 

"There are a lot of things that we need to unlock. For us, it's really the first test, to be honest, because missing Barcelona was not ideal. So, we are still going step by step, unlocking performance, and we've identified some areas that we need to improve.”

Fernando Alonso remains optimistic about the potential of the car | Credit: Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team via X

Where to improve

According to Stroll, the car is underperforming due to a number of factors: “It’s a combination of things: engine, balance, grip. We have all the tools to fight for race wins and championships. If we’re not doing that at the moment, then we have to think of what we can do better.”

The Canadian isn’t too optimistic: “I don’t think it falls from the sky. You have to improve and find performance in the car and the engine. These are just usual things in F1. When you’re behind the competition, you have to think about ways to extract more from the package you have, and at the same time also improve.”

The trouble is, Aston Martin is not the only team trying to find lap time. All the other teams, even the ones at the top, try to go faster: “No one stands still in this business. Everyone’s trying to find performance in every way, every weekend, all the time.”

Lance Stroll acknowledges that a lot has to happen for the car to be competitive | Credit: Lance Stroll via X

A different car

In the end, testing is only testing. Teams are trying new things and the car that stands at the start of the first race isn’t necessarily indicated by what we’ve seen in Barcelona or Bahrain. 

Stroll mentions that improvements are happening all the time: “We’re trying to extract more performance every day from the car. I think also longer term, bringing upgrades on the PU [power unit] side, on the chassis side. We will see in Australia where we line up, and then we will see throughout the season how we progress.” 

Aston Martin’s challenger will undergo more changes before the start of the 2026 season | Credit: Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team via X

Alonso isn’t concerned at all with the testing results: "We said at the launch of the car that we go from maybe a little bit more difficult start on the back foot to a much better second part of the season, and I still think the same. The second part of the season is when we need to be where we want to be. I think everything is running smoothly in that regard."

Newey adds to this: “The AMR26 that races in Melbourne is going to be very different to the one people saw at the Barcelona shakedown, and the AMR26 that we finish the season with in Abu Dhabi is going to be very different to the one that we start the season with. It's very important to keep an open mind.”

Let’s hope this faith will be rewarded and Aston Martin delivers some good action on track.