If there is one thing you cannot deny Adrian Newey since he joined Aston Martin, it is his candor. At times, perhaps candor to excess. A case in point is the transparency move Aston Martin has just undertaken: they published on their own website an interview in which Adrian Newey reveals the team’s miseries.
According to Newey, at Aston Martin there has been a serious problem of investment and organization in recent years, to the point that he says he found a team that practically survived on patches, and with procedures that had remained intact since the team was Jordan, more than 20 years ago.
Newey promises that changes will be noticeable in the AMR26B arriving in Hungary
Adrian Newey has broken his silence, and the truth is that every time he speaks the bar raises. The Aston Martin technical guru has reviewed how his first season with Fernando Alonso’s team is unfolding, and the summary is fairly clear: he has to revamp the house from its foundations. Because Newey has found at Aston Martin a dysfunctional team.
Newey relates that “we depended on processes that had been patched up and poorly made for years. Some date back to the early days of Jordan.” Remember that the current Aston Martin team is the same one that was once Jordan, but that legendary outfit disappeared at the end of 2005. In other words, Aston Martin depended on procedures from more than two decades ago.
“We had a system that worked only on patches”, laments Newey, who highlights that “the assembly of the car was frustrating because the parts were not ordered on time. It wasn’t that people weren’t doing their jobs, but that a system was failing.” A situation reminiscent of what James Vowles confronted at Williams in 2023.
Perhaps the most worrying thing Newey says is that “in this team not enough has been invested in the basic physical tools. It’s a problem of engineering simulation. We are investing now, but those tools are not rewritten or validated overnight.” So the project will still require time to mature.
Newey remembers that “to correlate those tools with the current car takes time.” So the British guru prefers not to quantify in concrete numbers the improvements that Aston Martin will bring to Hungary. The only thing Newey promises about the AMR26B is that “we expect a great improvement and you will be able to see the processes we have applied“.
But he warns that “our tools are not as sophisticated nor as good in correlation as they should be.” Whatever Newey is capable of achieving, and how quickly he achieves it, will determine Fernando Alonso’s future in Formula 1.
Images | Formula 1
