Newey says Aston Martin ‘buzz’ is building as he assesses Honda progress

This has been a tough season for Aston Martin and Honda, with Fernando Alonso’s charge to eighth place in the rain-affected Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia a rare highlight that provided a boost for everyone in the camp.

The Singapore race that followed was expected to suit the AMR26, but to the disappointment of all concerned it was a poor weekend.

The team are hopeful that Austin will play to the strengths of the package, and P12 and P13 for Alonso and Lance Stroll in FP1 represented a good start to the weekend.

At the centre of Aston Martin’s efforts to turn their fortunes around is Team Principal Adrian Newey. On a visit to the FIA press conference at COTA on Friday he insisted that despite the very public struggles there are positive signs back at the Silverstone HQ.

“I think we're making huge amounts of progress,” Newey said. “It really feels now like the team is coming together. The spirit, team spirit within the engineering offices in particular, I think is very strong now.

“You see a lot of ideas being generated, a lot of people chatting with each other, working late in the evening. You can feel the buzz in the factory now.”

Christian Horner has publicly suggested that the situation at Aston Martin is similar to that at Red Bull when Newey arrived 20 years ago, and he agrees.

“I think there are actually a lot of parallels between when I started at Red Bull and when I've started at Aston Martin,” he said. “Both teams that, through their history, had had a quite a lot of turmoil with changes of owners, changes of senior managers, et cetera.

“And it's then really trying to, as we've spoken before, get everybody working together, trying to break down silos, improve the culture. And that's been exactly the same again.”

Aston Martin are one side of the equation, and the other is Honda. Newey knows the Japanese manufacturer well from his Red Bull days, and having achieved huge success together he could be forgiven for being disappointed by how 2026 has turned out.

“Honda, obviously, are working hard,” he said. “A great company, as we all know, capable of great things, as they've proved many times in the past. We are working closely with them, so hopeful of the future.

“I would say at the moment, in all truth, Honda are a little bit behind where Red Bull, as the works team, picked up Honda in '19,” he explained. “But that obviously was four seasons after they first came back in '15. So this is their first year back in.

“Repeating myself, they're a great company. I have every confidence that they will accelerate quickly, and understand the problems of these particular PU regulations.”

It’s obviously difficult for Newey to be too specific about the shortfall in performance, and he suggests that publicly available data tells the story.

“The current deficit is fairly clear,” he said. “It's seen in the ADUO. The ADUO, of course, is only a power measurement, and as we all know, there's lots of other factors that combine to make the overall performance of the PU installed in the chassis. So there's no point in dwelling on that.

“I think relative deficit between chassis and engine, I think again, it's probably not for me to say. I think if people look at the GPS, then then you can start to get a much better picture from that.”

Asked if Honda’s progress within 2026 had met expectations – amid suggestions that performance on track has not matched that seen on the dyno – Newey was circumspect.

“That's quite a complicated question to answer, and one in which I can't go so far because of protection of IP of both Honda and ourselves,” he said. “But I think it's fair to say that Honda have probably been a little bit disappointed with how much progress they have managed to make this year.

“But as always, as is so often the case in that situation only strengthens resolve to go forward in the future. And the future is obviously the important bit for both companies.

“As I've mentioned before, they are very determined. These things don't change overnight, but they have a lot of good people, a lot of good processes now in place.”

He added: “There's a lot of energy and projects on the way now that perhaps are in their early stages of development – but we see a lot of promise from those.”