Aston Martin AMR26: Newey and the 4 months delay in the wind tunnel compared to rivals

There is anticipation for the Aston Martin In the Barcelona tests, the first Aston Martin F1 designed by Adrian Newey managed to go on track only in the last two days, for a total of just over 60 laps in total. Williams did worse than her, deciding to skip the Shakedown session.
In short, Aston Martin is a little late and also a little more overweight than the others – as is whispered by some rival teams after analyzing the test data. There is curiosity to understand if the AMR26 project will be competitive for victory, given that some solutions seemed rather extreme. Newey admits the delay The technical partner and team principal of Aston Martin F1, Adrian Newey did not hide the problems he had with the AMR26: “Due to the tight deadlines, we decided to take a particular direction. Only time will tell us whether it is right or not. The direction taken could certainly be interpreted as aggressive, it has several features that have never been introduced before, but is this enough to make a car aggressive? Maybe yes, but maybe not.” Going into detail, Newey explained: “The reality is that we didn’t get a 2026 model car into the wind tunnel until mid-April, whereas most – if not all – of our rivals had a car in the tunnel in early January. This set us back by around 4 months, resulting in a very compressed research and design cycle, with the car assembled at the last minute.”