Adrian Newey reveals that, for various reasons, Aston Martin was months behind its rivals in terms of getting its 2026 design into the windtunnel.

The admission follows last week's shakedown which saw the AMR26 arrive just in time for Lance Stroll to complete 5 laps on the penultimate day and subsequently Fernando Alonso a further 61 as the week concluded.

Speaking to his team's official website, Newey reveals that from the very start work on his first car for the Silverstone-based outfit was on a tight schedule.

"2026 is probably the first time in the history of F1 that the power unit regulations and chassis regulations have changed at the same time," he says. "It's a completely new set of rules, which is a big challenge for all the teams, but perhaps more so for us.

"The AMR Technology Campus is still evolving,2 He continues, "the CoreWeave Wind Tunnel 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 ten months," he admits. "The reality is that we didn't get a model of the '26 car into the wind tunnel until mid-April, whereas most, if not all of our rivals would have had a model in the wind tunnel 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.

"The AMR26 that races in Melbourne is going to be very different to the one people saw at the Barcelona shakedown, and the AMR26 that we finish the season with in Abu Dhabi is going to be very different to the one that we start the season with," Newey added. "It's very important to keep an open mind."

Referring to the AMR26's tight packaging, which raised eyebrows in the Barcelona paddock, he says: "It is much more tightly packaged than I believe has been attempted at Aston Martin. This required a very close working relationship with the mechanical designers to achieve the aerodynamic shapes we wanted," he adds. "But I have to say that all the mechanical designers here have really embraced that philosophy. It hasn't made their life easy, quite the opposite, but they've really risen to the challenge.

"The AMR26 that races in Melbourne is going to be very different to the one people saw at the Barcelona shakedown, and the AMR26 that we finish the season with in Abu Dhabi is going to be very different to the one that we start the season with," he adds. "It's very important to keep an open mind."