Adrian Newey designed the AMR26 while on paid leave from Red Bull Racing, he revealed this week. In the months between May 2024 and March 2025 he deliberately stepped away from the sport, but he couldn’t sit still. He analysed the new regulations in depth and from that work laid the foundation for the new Aston Martin driven by Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll.
The engineer left Red Bull but signed for Aston Martin four months later. Between September and March 2025 he was on the so‑called gardening leave (paid leave during which you are not allowed to disclose anything about the team you worked for, ed.).
‘What is the basis?’
The car, Newey says, was conceived during the routine work he carried out between his time at Red Bull and his move to Aston Martin. “The philosophy came during my gardening leave,” the Englishman said at the AMR26 unveiling. According to the engineer, it was important to start from the fundamentals. “We all knew the regulations had been published, so I tried to take a step back and identify what the basics are. What are the rules? What could be a solution? That’s how I arrived at a philosophy,” Newey explains.
The AMR26 concept is carefully thought out, as with every other team, yet the Brit already sees plenty of room for fresh ideas and innovation. Especially because of the new rules, there is still a lot to develop. “When there is a major regulation change there are always huge opportunities. It’s about who discovers what,” Newey says. There was also a major regulation change in 2022. With those new rules in place most teams were initially still looking for the right solutions. By the end of the 2025 season the cars, however, had been developed to such an extent that teams often qualified within one second of each other. “At the start of 2022 there were many different interpretations of the rules. In the end one proved to be the right and most suitable one and by 2024 everyone began to converge,” Newey notes.
