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Adrian Newey was caught off guard by the upheaval at Aston Martin when he agreed to join the team in 2025.
Lawrence Stroll fought off rival suitors to secure Newey’s signature when the legendary designer resigned from his post at Red Bull in 2025. It was an enormous coup for a team who scored less than 100 points in the championship that year.
Newey was the centrepiece of Stroll’s billion-pound plan to make Aston Martin a championship contender, but his first car is currently anchored to the bottom of the field, partly due to a severely underpowered Honda engine.
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Adrian Newey arrived at an Aston Martin team in a state of upheaval
Newey is earning £20m per year at Aston Martin, potentially rising to £30m with bonuses. He received shares in the team when he became the managing technical partner.
But according to Motorsport IT, Newey ‘didn’t expect’ to arrive at an Aston Martin factory that was ‘in turmoil’ amid extensive personnel turnover. There were more departures than new signings.
Reports last autumn suggested that Aston Martin had parted with at least seven members of their design team. Further up the chain, CEO Martin Whitmarsh left at the end of 2024.
And while all that was happening, the team were preparing for the end of their long-running Mercedes partnership and the start of the Honda era. Andy Cowell, who reluctantly had to give up the team principal role to Newey in late 2025, neglected the relationship with the Japanese manufacturer.
Has Lawrence Stroll made too many changes at Aston Martin?
Newey’s first press conference at the Australian GP was explosive as he complained about an unforeseen staff overhaul at Honda, claiming that they had sent their best engineers to build ‘solar panels or whatever’.
Perhaps Aston Martin would have been aware had there been closer contact between the two parties. When the time came to assemble the AMR26, engine vibrations were discovered.
This not only affected Newey’s chassis but also damaged the battery and forced the drivers to remove their hands from the steering wheel at times.
- READ MORE: Former Honda engineer says HRC weren’t brave enough to stop Adrian Newey’s Aston Martin ‘disaster’
Stroll thought that signing world-class engineers like Newey, Cowell and former Ferrari technical director Enrico Cardile would automatically instil a ‘top-tier’ mentality, but he has now realised that it’s not quite so simple.
Bottom of the standings with no points and five DNFs, Aston Martin are arguably paying the price for their organisational dysfunction and the lack of a coherent vision.
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