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Aston Martin officially launched their new F1 car yesterday evening amid a swathe of technical difficulties, but that wasn’t the strangest thing to happen during the event.
With Adrian Newey now heading the whole team in his new role as team principal for Aston Martin, the AMR26 is one of the most highly anticipated cars of the upcoming campaign.
Despite the previous sentiment that Silverstone-based outfit would be a contender from the very beginning due to Newey’s prowess, it’s been suggested that Aston Martin have faced a multitude of issues in recent weeks.
They turned up three days late to the shakedown in Barcelona, and Newey is currently battling issues with Honda’s new power unit, as well as the new synthetic fuel that is being developed by Aramco.
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During a recent episode of The Race’s F1 podcast, journalist Jon Noble detailed how the launch of Newey’s first challenger with Aston Martin was “weird”, largely in part to the team principal’s limited presence at the event.
He said, “It was kind of a weird launch, really, because this is Adrian Newey’s first Aston Martin car. He’s the team principal.
“So one of the big attractions of going to the launch was to speak to Adrian, get his feedback, and get some understanding of the car. You know, it’s an amazing-looking car, and there are lots of interesting tech aspects of it.
“But no, Newey didn’t speak to us. He was late, they said he claimed he was in some meetings. Then he did his stage stuff and then instantly rushed off.
“So we didn’t get to speak to Adrian. All we got from him were small snapshots on stage, and then it was mainly left to Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll.”
After Newey’s new role at Aston Martin was announced before the end of the 2025 term, many were keen to see how the British aerodynamicist would fare in such a high-profile role.
He had seemingly thrived in a position that saw him out of the spotlight, but now that he is the main man at his new team, the hasty exit from the squad’s official launch may hint at some apprehension about carrying out his media duties.
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Aston Martin marks the final car launch ahead of the upcoming F1 season
With the AMR26 being one of the most anticipated cars to come out of the winter break, it certainly seems fitting that they were the last of the 11 teams that are now on the grid to unveil their new challenger.
The event took place in Saudi Arabia, the home of title-sponsor Aramco, two days before the grid congregates in Bahrain for the first official week of pre-season testing.
Every team will be present in the Sakhir pit-lane this time around, following Williams’ absence from Barcelona after it emerged they failed the FIA’s crucial crash-test in the days leading up to it.
Mercedes were arguably the most impressive team during the shakedown, so all eyes will be on them to see if they can continue to bridge a gap to the rest of the field as they look to collect more valuable data for their engineers back in Brackley.
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