Adrian Newey says Aston Martin “buzz” is growing as he reviews Honda’s 2026 progress

By Vancouver Television Sports Desk

Adrian Newey delivered an encouraging assessment of Aston Martin’s behind-the-scenes progress on Friday at the FIA press conference at Circuit of the Americas (COTA), acknowledging that the team’s public results have been difficult but insisting the organisation is moving in the right direction. Newey said that “we’re making huge amounts of progress,” adding that it “really feels now like the team is coming together,” with particular emphasis on the engineering offices and the tone among staff as development work continues.

Newey told reporters he can see and feel the change inside the factory, describing more collaboration, more idea generation and engineers working late. “You see a lot of ideas being generated, a lot of people chatting with each other, working late in the evening. You can feel the buzz in the factory now,” he said, linking the internal momentum to a broader effort to improve how the team functions under pressure.

Newey’s comments were made against a backdrop of a turbulent season for both Aston Martin and Honda. The source notes that Fernando Alonso’s push to eighth place in the rain-affected Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia provided a rare bright spot for the camp earlier in the year. It was followed by a Singapore weekend that, according to the same account, did not meet expectations for the AMR26.

Looking ahead to the next opportunity, the team is hopeful that the Austin circuit will suit Aston Martin’s package. In practice at COTA, the source states that Alonso and Lance Stroll opened the weekend with positions P12 and P13 respectively in FP1, which Newey’s remarks frame as a “good start” for that set of circumstances.

Newey also linked Aston Martin’s internal rebuilding to his earlier experience at Red Bull, where he joined the team about 20 years ago. Christian Horner has publicly suggested that the situation at Aston Martin has parallels with Red Bull during Newey’s arrival, and Horner’s comparison was echoed by Newey in the source. “I think there are actually a lot of parallels between when I started at Red Bull and when I’ve started at Aston Martin,” Horner said, pointing to history marked by turmoil involving changes of owners and senior managers and the need to “break down silos” and improve culture across the organisation.

With Aston Martin making the case that internal co-ordination is improving, Newey shifted to the second major factor in 2026 competitiveness: Honda’s progress with the power unit regulations. Drawing on his familiarity with Honda from his Red Bull days, Newey said Honda are “working hard,” but admitted they are “a little bit behind” where Red Bull, as the works team, had been when it picked up Honda in 2019.

Newey’s explanation focused on timing and ramp-up across seasons rather than immediate blame for performance gaps. “That obviously was four seasons after they first came back in ’15. So this is their first year back in,” he said, while adding that he expects Honda to accelerate quickly and better understand the “particular PU regulations.”

On how he gauges the shortfall, Newey said he could not be overly specific about the causes of performance deficits because the installed power unit’s output depends on multiple interacting elements. He pointed instead to “the current deficit” being “fairly clear” in the ADUO, while noting that ADUO is a power measurement and therefore does not on its own determine overall performance. “There’s lots of other factors that combine to make the overall performance of the PU installed in the chassis,” he said.

When asked whether Honda’s progress during 2026 has met expectations—amid suggestions that the on-track performance has not matched dyno output—Newey was careful about what he could disclose. He said the question was “quite a complicated question to answer,” and that he could not go further because of “protection of IP” for both Honda and Aston Martin. He nevertheless said it is “fair to say that Honda have probably been a little bit disappointed with how much progress they have managed to make this year.”

Newey concluded that Honda’s resolve is strengthened by the situation and that “the future is obviously the important bit for both companies.” He added that Honda have “a lot of good people” and “a lot of good processes now in place,” and said there are “a lot of energy and projects on the way now that perhaps are in their early stages of development,” which Aston Martin views as promising.

The source positions the COTA weekend as an immediate test of whether that work—inside Aston Martin and within Honda’s 2026 development—can translate into clearer on-track momentum, following earlier inconsistencies across the season and the differing fortunes between Bahrain and Singapore.