Aston Martin’s tough 2025 F1 season isn’t why Newey was named team principal – Alonso

On 26 November, Aston Martin announced that Adrian Newey would be its Formula 1 team principal for the 2026 season.

Legendary F1 engineer Newey joined Aston on 1 March as managing technical director and will take over from current team boss Andy Cowell, who is stepping aside to become chief strategy officer after replacing Mike Krack for this year.

Newey will therefore become Aston’s third team principal in just 12 months, as billionaire owner Lawrence Stroll’s mammoth investment into the Silverstone-based squad so far fails to pay off.

Stroll hired some of the best technicians from other teams – including Newey and Cowell, a long-time leader of Mercedes’ powertrain division – and turned the old Force India factory into state-of-the-art facilities, but Aston still struggled in the last season of the ground-effect era. The outfit finished seventh in the 2025 constructors’ championship, with Fernando Alonso’s fifth place in Hungary its highest finish.

Still, the two-time F1 world champion insisted this underperformance had nothing to do with the decision to entrust Newey with more responsibilities.

“No, I don't think so,” Alonso said of poor results potentially influencing the decision. “2025 is a challenging season for us, no doubts. But to be honest, this is not removing the long-term view of the team. The situation we are in is what it is. We are fighting for just the last few points in some races and we are not happy with that. But this is not really influencing any decision or any big change in the team.”

Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin F1 Team, hugs Lawrence Stroll, Owner, Aston Martin F1 Team, on the grid

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Alonso wasn’t caught unawares by this management reshuffle, explaining that Stroll regularly discussed it with him.

“Lawrence is talking to us regularly, once a week on the phone, and when he comes to the races, every day we have lunch or dinner together,” the Spaniard revealed. “So we are always in the loop, let's say, on what Lawrence thinks. [He] asks opinions on what will be best for the team, what is missing. So we are very involved always on everything that they are thinking.

“Obviously, we don't have any power of decisions, but they keep us informed. So this was slowly coming up, that Lawrence was thinking about this thing.”