Adrian Newey publicly disclosed he battled significant health issues throughout the 2025 season. Aston Martin’s team principal spoke directly to the outfit’s official website, describing a “difficult period” where he simply couldn’t operate at full capacity. He confirmed he is “OK now” after adjusting his workload to protect his well-being.
And with that personal hurdle cleared, Newey is turning his attention to a radically overhauled AMR26. Aston Martin is abandoning its current overweight setup and will debut a heavily revised, re-homologated chassis at the upcoming Hungarian Grand Prix.
What We Know
- Health confirmation: Newey confirmed he is fully recovered after a severe physical battle last year in a recent health update.
- Early debut: The team opted to launch the lighter chassis at the twisty Hungaroring rather than waiting for a new Honda power unit at the Belgian GP.
- New parts: The package features a freshly crash-tested forward chassis, a new nose, and tweaks to the rear suspension.
- Production shift: Aston Martin is moving manufacturing of key components like floors and gearbox casings entirely in-house.
The AMR26 was plagued from the start. Newey admitted the engineering team pushed an overly ambitious aerodynamic direction too early in development. The result? A heavily overweight car. That design flaw was then amplified by severe vibrations from the Honda power unit.
But the root cause goes far deeper than a single bad design cycle. Newey directly blamed Aston Martin’s disastrous start to 2026 on deeply outdated factory infrastructure. He revealed the team was relying on “patched and bodged” systems dating all the way back to the early days of the Jordan F1 team. That is the exact same legacy setup that occupied the Silverstone base decades before Aston Martin arrived, shedding light on the outdated Jordan-era infrastructure.
Those ancient systems caused severe bottlenecks. Parts were ordered late. Quality control slipped.
To fix the systemic failures, Aston Martin is using this painful stretch to completely rewrite its operations manual. The shift toward producing critical components on-site aims to cut down those crippling delays and improve the technical specifications of the floor and gearbox casings.
The Hungarian Grand Prix will be the first real test to see if dumping the Jordan-era ghosts actually translates to lap time.