Silverstone sounds different these days. Since Adrian Newey took his seat at Aston Martin, the team’s pristine wind tunnel hasn’t had much chance to cool, and the aero department’s tempo has gone up a gear.
Andy Cowell, who returned to the front line as team principal for 2025, can feel it. “The wind tunnel team has responded tremendously to Adrian’s arrival,” he told PlanetF1.com during the Hungarian Grand Prix. “We’re trying an awful lot of different architectural ideas… bigger changes to the wind tunnel model than normal.” The pipeline’s been sharpened too: “The time from Adrian’s drawing board to a wind tunnel run is a third of what it was.”
With the AMR25 short on headline results, Newey’s energy is pointed almost entirely at 2026, when Formula 1 rips up the current ground-effect rulebook and ushers in a new era with active aerodynamics and a fresh power unit formula. It’s familiar terrain for him. From the rules reset dominance of McLaren’s MP4/13 in 1998 to the RB5’s late-season supremacy in 2009—and a Williams era defined by sophisticated active systems—Newey’s CV reads like a greatest-hits album of regulation pivots.
Aston Martin has built the stage to match the ambition. The new wind tunnel only came online months ago; now it’s hosting rapid-fire concept swings as Newey’s fingerprints spread from architecture to structural optimization and manufacturing choices. “He’s looking at maximising stiffness, minimising weight,” Cowell said, “and the culture as well; that we’re here to win.” There’s a visible intensity about it too: Newey’s glass-fronted office sits on the design floor, the man often heads-down and sketching while the factory hums around him.
There’s no real yardstick yet—that’s the point of a reset—but internally the targets are set sky-high. The 2026 car, AMR26, will be the first product of a new suite of relationships and technology stacks: Honda power, Aramco fuels and lubricants, and Aston Martin’s own transmission and hydraulics. “Lots of new relationships, lots of new technologies,” Cowell said. “We are setting ourselves tough targets… fighting to hit deadlines to release information.”
The supply chain’s been warned: more complex parts, less lead time, higher precision. The operations group is making more of the car in-house. And the tone after a rough Sunday? Unforgiving. “When we have a bad race weekend, should we, on a Monday, be happy? No. We should be thinking we’ve missed out,” Cowell added. Newey, he says, is relentless in the right way—always probing the blind spots.
The countdown is brisk. An all-new regulation cycle begins with a behind-closed-doors shakedown in Barcelona in January. After years of investment and expansion, the question hangs over Aston Martin: potential or product? Cowell won’t declare anything perfect—ever—but he likes the pieces and how they’re fitting. “From Adrian’s comments of where great is, we’re lifting our targets and our expectations to be above great,” he said.
Ambition isn’t in short supply. Neither, clearly, is airflow.
