Adrian Newey impact in first 10 days at Aston Martin revealed
F1 design guru Adrian Newey has already made an impact in his first 10 days at Aston Martin.
Aston Martin have explained how they are already benefitting from the arrival of legendary F1 car designer Adrian Newey.
Newey officially started work in his new role as Aston Martin’s Managing Technical Partner on 3 March following his decision to leave Red Bull after a near two-decade spell at the team.
Aston Martin team principal Andy Cowell provided an insight into Newey’s first 10 days with the Silverstone-based squad, and how the 66-year-old design guru's impact is already being felt on the eve of the new F1 season.
"Adrian's been with us for 10 days now. His first day was very low-key,” Cowell told media in Melbourne ahead of this weekend’s season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
"He’s an engineer, he's walked in, he's picking up the 2026 regulations, getting into the detail of the work that we've been doing, understanding that, contributing to ideas, [using] the drawing board.
"It's a joy to work with Adrian. His experience is vast, his hunger is huge, and it’s wonderful conversations about making fast race cars and the compromises that you have to make. He’s building up good working relationships with engineers that have been pushing the concept to date.
“There’s already a few areas, I’m smiling to myself, I won’t give you the detail, because I don’t want our opponents to know, but you know, there’s a couple of areas where already he’s saying, ‘can we just push that in this direction? Can we just do that?’
“And engineers, you know, mechanical engineers, composite engineers, are looking at it and going,’ yeah, okay, we’ll have a go’ and I think that’s the Adrian effect. He picks up on the areas where you should push them and everybody’s just embracing it.”
What is Newey focusing on?
Cowell confirmed that Newey’s focus “has been entirely on the 26 car” and F1’s upcoming regulation overhaul rather than Aston Martin’s 2025 package.
“Whether it’s a drawing board, whether it’s CAD, it’s taking creative 3D thoughts that are in your head, and communicating it to colleagues,” Cowell added. “We all know how to read drawings. The screen’s 2D in CAD, although you can rotate to observe in 3D.
“Adrian’s drawing prowess is such that he draws sections so that you can see it in 3D and the world of aerodynamics works with pure aerodynamicists and also people that create 3D surfaces.
“So they’re experts in creating beautiful surfaces in the world of 3D. It’s just bringing all of that together and it’s having the flexibility to work with different media to download the creative thoughts in a human brain and collaborate together.
“It’s a big team of people. The aerodevelopment world isn’t one person. It’s this group of people communicating.”
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