Aston Martin is choosing the long game — and living with the short-term sting.
While the team has quietly found some form heading into the summer break, CEO and team principal Andy Cowell isn’t sugar-coating where the AMR25 sits right now. “We’re not happy,” he told RacingNews365, admitting that the car could be further up the grid if Adrian Newey had been unleashed on this season’s development.
Newey arrived in March and, in classic Newey fashion, instantly became the most fascinating person in any room he walked into. But Aston Martin hasn’t asked him to rescue 2025. He’s been ring-fenced for 2026 — for the car, the concept and the reset that comes with F1’s next regulation overhaul.
“If, from the first of March, Adrian had put all his efforts into improving the ’25 car, [I’m] absolutely certain that we would be further up the grid today,” Cowell said. “But we’re not doing that, we’re focusing on ’26 onwards, because the investment will pay off over more racing seasons.”
That trade-off is the story of their season. The cars are due to shrink and shed weight in 2026, with power units delivering a 50/50 split between electric and internal combustion, running on sustainable fuel. DRS is set to disappear as active aero takes center stage, and the Pirellis go narrower — 25mm at the front, 30mm at the rear. In other words, next year’s playbook isn’t an update; it’s a blank page. If you’ve got Adrian Newey in the building, you hand him the pen.
The flip side is weekends like Belgium. Aston Martin looked lost at Spa, slipping to the foot of the midfield just seven days before playing dark horse in Budapest. Hungary brought a proper bounce: Fernando Alonso P5, Lance Stroll P7, 16 points, and a nudge up to sixth in the Constructors’ standings at the break. It’s been that kind of year — points in five of the last six, with one sharp dip and a promising high to close out the first half.
Cowell acknowledges the emotional whiplash. “On a Sunday evening… Saturday after qualifying, Sunday after a race, we’re not happy. Monday morning, we’re not happy. And then you get into the jobs list, and crack on.”
There’s also a quietly interesting subplot behind that uptick. Former Aston strategy chief turned broadcaster Bernie Collins reckons a new front wing has clicked — and it might be doing more than the stopwatch alone suggests.
“They appear to have just brought a new front wing,” Collins said on Sky’s The F1 Show. “The running discussion in the paddock is they’re running a new front wing with an old floor.”
It sounds simple; it rarely is. Front wings don’t just make downforce, they choreograph airflow for the rest of the car. If the previous spec was starving the floor or diffuser of the right conditions, a well-matched replacement can light up the whole package.
“Just getting one assembly correct — particularly the front wing or a front brake duct… it can turn your performance around quite quickly,” Collins added, while cautioning that the proof needs to travel: Hungary’s high downforce rarely tells the entire story.
That’s the other tension in Aston’s year. You can write off a season only so far before a driver like Alonso grows visibly irritated. The early rounds were bleak in places, and the team felt stuck between concept changes and limited short-term gains. Hungary brought daylight — and crucially, data. If Aston Martin can understand precisely why that front end switched on, while still holding its nerve on the 2026 project, the second half of the year becomes about building a bridge rather than treading water.
The Newey question looms over everything, inevitably. His CV doesn’t need repeating, but it is central to why Aston Martin is making these choices. You don’t hire the sport’s most decorated designer and distract him with triage. You give him a clean brief, time, and as few compromises as possible. That’s what Cowell has done.
Still, this is a results business. And in a compressed 2025 midfield, where one update can swing a weekend, it’s notable that Aston Martin’s development hasn’t flat-lined. The new front wing hints at a more coherent aero map; the car’s behavior in Budapest — strong through the twisty, high-energy middle sector — was the kind of step that’s felt elusive this year.
What comes next is the test. If
