Claire Williams has one doubt about Adrian Newey’s role at Aston Martin despite his ‘absolute genius’

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Adrian Newey is entering his very first season of Formula 1 as the team principal of a racing outfit, but Claire Williams has one doubt over the legendary aerodynamicist’s new role despite his “absolute genius”.

Aston Martin were the big winners of the race to secure Adrian Newey’s signature upon his exit from Red Bull in 2024, welcoming him to the team last March following a period of gardening leave.

Newey made an immediate impact on the team by helping to sign off on certain upgrades for the AMR25 during last year’s campaign.

However, headlines were made towards the latter stages of the season after Aston Martin announced that Newey would lead the iconic British manufacturer as team principal in a shuffle between key personnel at the squad.

It marks the British designer’s first foray into leadership of an F1 team, and not everyone is convinced that he’s cut out for the role.

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Claire Williams questions the extent of Adrian Newey’s role as team principal at Aston Martin

During an appearance on the Business of Sport podcast, Claire Williams was asked for her thoughts on Newey’s new role at the Silverstone-based team.

The former Williams team principal started by stating that she doesn’t know the 66-year-old all too well, despite his tenure at the British constructor during the 1990s.

However, she highlighted the reputation of Newey’s that had been passed down from her late father, Frank Williams, but questioned his prowess as a team leader rather than his focus being mainly in the aerodynamic department.

She said, “He has the most extraordinary reputation as an aerodynamicist. If Adrian can’t make it work, probably no one can. He is an utter, absolute genius.

“He can make a car do what probably no one else can, but can he be a team principal? When you’re a TP, you’ve got to have a 360-view of the team. You’ve got to have an eye on everything.

“I say that from my perspective, that was how I went about being a team principal. I had my senior leaders across all of the areas, and then I was the person at the top of the food chain.

“Whether that structure would be applied in the case of Adrian Newey being team principal at Aston, in the sense of, ‘Is he a traditional team principal?’

“Is the requirement for Adrian’s role going to be having that 360-degree view, or is he more like a TP in name, and his singular focus still remains on the car and its aerodynamics and its performance and then they’re going to get other people to do the other side of the TP job.

“Lawrence Stroll is a clever man, and he knows how to make businesses succeed. He’s not going to jeopardise having bought in Adrian Newey and jeopardise that talent by putting him in the wrong job, because that would be stupid.

“You would be utterly stupid if you diluted Adrian’s time, ability, and talent by making him worry about signing off holiday forms for people, because that’s a part of a TP’s job.”

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Adrian Newey’s reputation may have helped him get the backing of Aston Martin engineers

Newey’s stint in the team principal role got off to a good start after Ted Kravitz saw Aston Martin staff show ‘instant respect’ towards the design genius during his first team talk at the 2025 Qatar GP.

The reputation that Williams alluded to certainly would have aided the Briton’s cause to get his employees on his side during the transitional period, and it may also help him to keep morale high when things are going wrong for the team.

With the new era of regulations now upon us, Aston Martin haven’t got off to the best start, with Newey reportedly facing several ‘headaches’ behind the scenes.

The AMR26 is arguably the most anticipated challenger on the grid for the upcoming term, and it will be fascinating to see how Newey fares as he leads the Silverstone-based outfit into the storm.