F1 News: Newey will work on 2025 and 2026 Aston Martin car
(GMM) Other team members are not backing Fernando Alonso’s claim that success will “certainly not” come for Formula 1 team Aston Martin in 2025, but Adrian Newey might bring a win or two.
Since a solid start to the 2023 season and comprehensive team infrastructure investments ever since, the ambitious Silverstone-based team’s in-season car development notably stagnated over the past 18 months.
“Certainly not in 2025,” Alonso said recently when asked if he can be a race winner and title contender again. “The cars will be the same as last year and it will be practically impossible for us to make such a big jump.
“Hopefully it will be better than in 2024, but we will not win the championship. There are changes coming in the regulations and Adrian Newey will start working on the 2026 project from April.”
However, departed Red Bull technical guru Newey has now told Auto Motor und Sport that he actually will be working on the 2025 car once he starts work at the team in March.
“I will be focused on 2026,” he confirmed, “but Lawrence (Stroll) will definitely want me to be involved a bit with the 2025 car.
“Whether I can really contribute something this year or not, I have no idea until I start.”
New team boss Andy Cowell, meanwhile, is notably more optimistic than Alonso about the coming season.
“Can we win the world championship in 2025?” he said. “Who thinks we can? Nobody? Well, look what McLaren did. So why can’t we?”
Newey, however, warns that all the well-financed teams have basically maxed out the full potential of their existing ‘ground effect’ car concepts ahead of the final season of the current regulations.
He says the top four teams – McLaren, Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes – all look like potential race winners for 2025. “It’s a clear sign that we have come pretty close to the limit,” Newey explained.
Ferrari team boss Frederic Vasseur agrees. “There are no longer any upgrades that provide more than four or five points of usable downforce.”
Big chance 2026 will be an engine formula
Formula 1’s new 2026 rules have a “big chance” of becoming an engine formula early on, design legend Adrian Newey believes.
When asked in the same interview with F1 journalist Michael Schmidt for German publication Auto Motor und Sport about whether the new rules could be like the start of the V6 turbo-hybrid era in 2014 when Mercedes had a significant advantage, Newey replied: “There has to be a big chance that it’s an engine formula at the start.
“The reality is I can’t remember another time in Formula 1 when both the chassis regulations and the regulations have changed simultaneously.
“And in this case the chassis regulations have been very much written to try to compensate, let’s say, for the power unit regulations,” added Newey
“So, it’s an extra dimension. I think engine manufacturers will have learned to an extent on the lack of preparation that the rivals to Mercedes did prior to that change [for 2014] but there has to be a chance that one manufacturer will come out well on top and it’ll become a power unit-dominated regulation, at least to start with.
“And there’s a chance, if it’s on the combustion engine side of it that somebody comes up with a dominant combustion engine, that that will last through the length of the formula.
“Because the way the regulations are written, it’s quite difficult for people who are behind to catch up.
“If it’s on the electrical side, then there’s much more ability to catch up if you’re behind.”