Montoya: “Newey is an engineer, he’s not there to manage the press or deal with sponsors”

Terrible start The arrival of Adrian Newey as Aston Martin’s new designer, combined with huge investments by Lawrence Stroll for the 2026 season, had given rise to hope in view of this world championship, with the Silverstone team driven by the new Honda power units after the conclusion of the partnership with Mercedes. Instead, at least in these first three tests, the team’s performance was disastrous: only Fernando Alonso managed to complete a race in the Japanese GP, but only finishing in 18th place. A result that highlighted the lack of competitiveness of the AMR26 and the Japanese engines, in a start to the championship also characterized by controversy over the vibrations suffered by the pilots inside the cockpit. Engineer and that’s it There is then a non-secondary aspect, which focuses on Adrian Newey: the latter, in addition to holding the role of designer, was also Team Principal of the team, with the role which should pass into the hands of Jonathan Wheatley after his brief experience in Audi. Former driver Juan Pablo Montoya spoke precisely about Newey as manager, expressing himself as follows to Casinostugan: “In Spanish we have a saying: ‘If you’re a shoemaker, keep making shoes’. Adrian is an engineer and should focus on that. He’s good at designing cars, he’s not a team principal. So, I can understand if they hire Jonathan Wheatley. Adrian is an engineer, he doesn’t deal with politics. He’s not there to manage the press. He shouldn’t deal with sponsors. His only objective it should be about making the car faster, which is what it excels at. It simply needs to focus on the basics.” Problems are evident in many respects at Aston Martin, but it is Montoya himself who believes in the team’s recovery, convinced that we will be able to see improvements already during this world championship: “The funny thing is that I still believe that they will surprise everyone once all the problems have been resolved. I really think that they will have a rather competitive car once all this s**t has settled. It will take them more time, but I think that Aston will surprise us and I believe that they will surprise us this year”.