Fernando Alonso has spent most of his Formula 1 life trying to beat Adrian Newey’s ideas.
From the Renault years, through the long stretches where Newey’s cars set the aerodynamic agenda at Red Bull, Alonso has typically been the one peering across the pitlane at the machine he needed to out-think on Sunday. In 2026, for the first time, he gets to sit in one.
Aston Martin’s AMR26 is the first car to carry Newey’s full attention under the new rules, and it arrives at a moment when the team is trying to turn its ambition into something more concrete than shiny press releases. New power unit partner Honda. A completed factory. A new windtunnel. A new simulator. And, crucially, a regulation reset that gives every team the opportunity to sell a new story — then prove it.
Alonso isn’t pretending it’s anything other than a landmark.
“A very proud moment, for sure,” he said as Aston Martin rolled the AMR26 out in its full colours after first showing it in Barcelona in an all-black look. “I’ve been racing against Adrian for the whole of my career, and now finally, I can drive one of his cars.
“I think a huge challenge this year with a new set of regulations, and being a works team, you know, having Honda on our side, Aramco, and the challenge of the sustainable fuels for the 2026 regulations.
“Very proud to be part of this family and this organisation, and looking forward to succeed together.”
That “finally” matters. It’s not just sentimentality from a two-time world champion nearing the far end of a career most drivers don’t get. It’s also an acknowledgement of what Newey represents inside this sport: not a mascot hire, not a brand statement, but the closest thing F1 has to a competitive accelerant when the rulebook is torn up.
And that’s the real point here. Aston Martin doesn’t simply get Newey; it gets Newey at the one time his influence tends to be most brutal — at the start of a new cycle, when concepts are still soft and direction matters more than detail. Newey joined in March 2025 and, by Alonso’s account, his focus immediately snapped to 2026. That’s exactly the sort of timeline that can define the pecking order for years.
Alonso framed it as a convergence of “new pieces”, and for once that phrase doesn’t feel like paddock wallpaper.
“I feel this is a very important moment for the team,” he said. “It’s the very first time we are a works team. We have all the new pieces coming together. We have the factory now completed, we have the windtunnel, we have Honda, and we have a new set of regulations.
“So everything combines in a very important season for the team. What I feel is that it’s the beginning of something important in the next coming years.
“So yeah, as I said, very proud, very excited to be part of the project, and we are really looking forward to work flat out to have the success that I think this team deserves in the near future.”
The “works team” point is doing heavy lifting. Aston Martin has talked like a front-runner for a while, but 2026 is where the infrastructure and partnerships either translate into lap time or get exposed. A Honda works relationship changes the dynamic — not just in outright performance potential, but in integration, priorities, and how tightly the car and power unit can be conceived together from day one of a regulation set. That’s the kind of stuff that separates a well-funded customer operation from a properly joined-up contender.
It’s also why this season isn’t just about whether Aston Martin is faster; it’s about whether it’s coherent.
Alonso, naturally, is leaning into the moment. He’s too experienced to confuse promise with results, but he also knows what a real opportunity looks like when it’s in front of him. If Aston Martin’s project is going to be more than a good-looking facility in Silverstone, 2026 is the season it has to start sounding — and behaving — like a team that expects to win.
Lance Stroll, who has lived every stage of the modern Aston Martin build, sounded less philosophical and more energised by the sheer scale of what’s coming together.
“All of it,” he said when asked what excites him most about the project. “Just everything coming together.
“The new set of regulations, the collaboration with Honda, and driving an Adrian Newey-designed car is pretty exciting, for sure.”
Stroll’s view from the inside is arguably the most telling barometer for how radically the team believes it has changed, because he’s been there since the start of this incarnation of Team Silverstone. For him, the transformation isn’t abstract.
“When I think back to the team we were in 2021, and when you see everything that’s happened in Silverstone today, the transformation is incredible,” he said. “The ambition we have as a team. We want to win. We want to fight for race wins and championships in the future.
“I think this next chapter for us this season, the new regulations, the collaboration with Honda, all the talent that has joined the team over the last few years, the windtunnel, the new simulator, all the tools we have to fight for race wins and championships going forward. I think it’s just very exciting. I’m looking forward to the future, for sure.”
The question F1 will ask — quickly, and without sentiment — is whether Aston Martin’s “future” starts now, or whether 2026 becomes another year of foundations and phrases.
But for Alonso, there’s a quieter subplot running alongside the big-team narrative. After decades of measuring himself against Newey’s cars, he’s finally in one. If the AMR26 is even close to what Aston Martin hopes, Alonso won’t need to romanticise what it means. He’ll have a stopwatch to do it for him.
