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Aston Martin attracted a lot of attention after unveiling their new car at the Barcelona shakedown, but Juan Pablo Montoya disagrees with one thing Adrian Newey has said.
The 2026 F1 season marks a big year for Aston Martin, as Newey has now taken on the role of team principal for the first time in his storied career. Team owner Lawrence Stroll signed off on a reshuffle in November that moved Andy Cowell to the role of chief strategy officer.
Stroll made signing Newey a top priority in 2024 when the design guru decided to leave Red Bull, as he saw the 2026 F1 regulations as Aston Martin’s route to rise up the pecking order. Stroll even made Newey a 5% shareholder in the Aston Martin F1 team to ensure he joined.
Newey officially joined Aston Martin in March 2025 and immediately started designing their 2026 car, which caught many people’s eyes straight away when it debuted at the shakedown in Barcelona. In particular, the sidepods on Aston Martin’s 2026 F1 car got tongues wagging.
Barcelona shakedown complete ✅ Which team has surprised you the most? 👇
Juan Pablo Montoya cannot believe Adrian Newey thinks Aston Martin’s wind tunnel is the best in F1
Newey also spent his first few months at Aston Martin ensuring that everything at their new factory in Silverstone was up to scratch operationally. Now, Newey claims Aston Martin have “the best wind tunnel” in F1 and feels it will be “a game-changer” for the team’s aspirations.
READ MORE: Everything you need to know about F1’s 2026 engine and aero regulations
But Montoya, who worked with Newey at McLaren in 2005, cannot believe the 67-year-old’s suggestion that Aston Martin’s wind tunnel is now the very best in F1. He also expects Aston Martin are “going to struggle” with syncing their wind tunnel and on-track data during 2026.
Montoya told AS: “The thing is, they have one of the best, [but] not the best, wind tunnels, and the most modern and latest wind tunnel technology.
“But the most important thing is the results produced by the model, and the results produced by the actual car. That’s the most complicated part. That’s where I personally think they’re going to struggle.”
Aston Martin did not run their 2026 F1 car in their wind tunnel until mid-April 2025
Newey immediately voiced his concerns about Aston Martin’s simulator when he joined the team last March, as the design genius demanded that the Silverstone squad improved their fundamental tools. Their wind tunnel was another vital tool for designing their 2026 F1 car.
READ MORE: All you need to know about Aston Martin F1 team principal Adrian Newey
Fill in the blank: Aston Martin will finish P_ in the 2026 F1 standings
Formula 1 banned teams from putting their 2026 cars in their simulators and conducting any Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) tests until January 2025, to try to stop teams finding an advantage. Yet Aston Martin did not run their 2026 car in their wind tunnel until mid-April.
Newey admits Aston Martin’s delayed start to their wind tunnel programme played a part in their late arrival to the 2026 Barcelona shakedown. Lance Stroll only took the first laps in the Aston Martin AMR26 late on the fourth of the five days that F1 spent in Barcelona last week.
“The CoreWeave Wind Tunnel was not on song until April, and I only joined the team last March, so we’ve started from behind, in truth,” Newey recently told Aston Martin’s website.
“The reality is that we didn’t get a model of the ‘26 car into the wind tunnel until mid-April, whereas most, if not all, of our rivals would have had a model in the wind tunnel from the moment the 2026 aero testing ban ended at the beginning of January last year.”
Aston Martin have a number of potential problems on their hands ahead of the two tests in Bahrain on February 11-13 and 18-20, as well. It is said that there are increasing rumours of issues with Aston Martin’s Amarco fuel and Honda’s engine built to the 2026 F1 regulations.
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