Why Aston Martin picked Adrian Newey as team principal for its Honda F1 era

Aston Martin's choice to promote Adrian Newey to team principal stemmed from current team chief Andy Cowell's voluntary move to a more specialist role. But while this comes with a set of new responsibilities, Newey is keen on not diluting his focus on the design and development of the 2026 car.

The Silverstone outfit confirmed ahead of the Qatar Grand Prix weekend that Newey will be taking over the team principal role from the start of 2026, combining his current responsibilities as managing technical partner with those of a team chief.

Incumbent boss Andy Cowell will move to the new role of chief strategy officer, as he aims to manage the relationship between the team and its stakeholders.

Speaking to Sky Sports F1, Newey explained how the change in role came about.

"To be perfectly honest, it became very evident that with the challenge of the '26 PU, then, Andy's skill set in terms of helping the three-way relationship between Honda, Aramco [title sponsor] and ourselves, is absolutely his skill set. So he very magnanimously volunteered to be heavily involved in that through the first part of '26. That left a kind of, OK, well, who's going to be TP?”

Adrian Newey, Managing Technical Partner of Aston Martin F1 walks in the Paddock

He was the logical answer.

“And since I'm going to be doing all the early races anyway, it doesn't actually particularly change my workload because I'm there anyway. So I may as well pick up that bit other than, of course, having to talk to you.”

Despite being the most successful individual in the championship, Newey has never held the role of team principal. But he assured listeners that his primary motivation remains the design and development of the car.

“That's really what I want to and need to do. That's what gets me out of bed in the morning. So I'm determined not to dilute that.”

Cowell successfully managed Mercedes' incredibly dominant hybrid power unit programme, and confirmed his move to Aston Martin in 2024. But while he quickly became team principal for the start of 2025 replacing Mike Krack, this change was short-lived.

His background in powertrain management, however, will help facilitate the relationship between the team and Honda.

"[Newey] was doing internally a lot of management and Andy was doing a lot of management as well on the engine side and engine integration to the chassis," Fernando Alonso said after the news. "It was maybe a normal logic step into 2026.”

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