The development of Adrian Newey's first Aston Martin Formula 1 car started out "on the back foot by about four months" compared to its rivals.
That's Newey's own claim about the AMR26, which drew plenty of eyeballs when it debuted in the final hour of the penultimate day of F1's first 2026 test at Barcelona, featuring plenty of bold design choices.
In an interview published on the Aston Martin F1 team's own website, Newey said rivals were able to begin testing when the 2026 windtunnel ban lifted on January 1 last year.
Newey started work with Aston Martin as a managing technical partner on March 1, with his full focus on 2026, rather than any 2025 troubleshooting.
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But the 2026 project could not fully start immediately, as the team waited for its new windtunnel - "probably the best windtunnel in the world for F1 application", according to Newey - to come online.
"The AMR Technology Campus is still evolving, the windtunnel wasn't on song until April, and I only joined the team last March, so we've started from behind, in truth. It's been a very compressed timescale and an extremely busy 10 months," Newey, now also team principal at Aston Martin, said.
"The reality is that we didn’t get a model of the '26 car into the windtunnel until mid-April, whereas most, if not all of our rivals would have had a model in the windtunnel from the moment the 2026 aero testing ban ended at the beginning of January last year.
"That put us on the back foot by about four months, which has meant a very, very compressed research and design cycle. The car only came together at the last minute, which is why we were fighting to make it to the Barcelona shakedown."
Aston Martin debuted late last Thursday at Barcelona, with just 65 laps completed across that final hour and Friday.
It completed fewer laps than F1 newcomer Cadillac, which got its full three-day allocation in, and only has more on-track mileage with its 2026 car than Williams, which missed the Barcelona test altogether.
"Because of our compressed timescale, we decided on a particular direction [of aerodynamic philosophy] and that's the one we've pursued," Newey explained.
"Whether that proves to be the right one or not, only time will tell. But you have to choose your path and get on with it."
Asked whether it was an "aggressive interpretation of the rules", as some such as The Race's own ex-F1 technical director Gary Anderson have called it, Newey said: "I never look at any of my designs as aggressive. I just get on with things and pursue what we feel is the right direction.
"The direction we've taken could certainly be interpreted as aggressive. It's got quite a few features that haven't necessarily been done before. Does that make it aggressive? Possibly. Possibly not."
He agreed with another typical observation of a Newey-style car that's present on the AMR26: "The car is tightly packaged. Much more tightly packaged than I believe has been attempted at Aston Martin before."
Newey also aimed to correct a key weakness of the team during the ground effect era.
"The previous generation of ground effect cars from 2022 to 2025 became quite difficult to drive. The Aston Martin, unfortunately, was one particular example of that," Newey said.
"With this new formula, we're trying to make a car that Lance [Stroll] and Fernando [Alonso] can consistently extract a good level of performance from."
'Very different' car for Melbourne
Bold as the AMR26 at Barcelona may have been, Newey promised that the Aston Martin that turns up for the season-opening Australian Grand Prix will be "very different".
He added: "And the AMR26 that we finish the season with in Abu Dhabi [the season finale] is going to be very different to the one that we start the season with."
Newey and his team have been focused on their own design path but, as with all teams, will be keeping a keen eye on the competition.
"Now, whether other people come up with a similar solution to ours, we don't know and we won't until we start seeing other people's cars," he said. "We've just tried to pursue what we think is the correct direction for us.
“Other people might have pursued other directions. It's part of the excitement of new regulations, seeing what everybody comes up with."
