When Adrian Newey the top rated Formula One designer left Red Bull and joined Aston Martin we wondered how long it would take for his knowledge and influence to influence the teams results.
Last week Aston Martin added an upgrade being a new front wing and they qualified in 19th and 20th. This week with the data having been gained from that race things have changed drastically with both the Aston Martin cars qualifying in 5th and 6th. This is something we have never seen at Aston martin with the cars challenging near the top fighting it out with the race favorites.
When Adrian Newey joined the Red Bull racing team in 2006 the team was basically still the old Jaguar Racing team. The team expected him to join the team and not become the main designer overseeing the team. jagua had won nothing so it was a shock to Newey to find so much push back against his ideas.
Things were so bad he had to employ a friend as a spy to see who was sabotaging his ideas. This delayed Red Bull's development for a good 12 months as Newey had to get rid of all the bad apples first. The first Red Bull title was in 2010 so it took him 4 years, but if one forgets the first year it actually took him 3 years to take the team to the top of the grid.
Joining Aston martin things are very different as he is now a share holder and is in charge of the cars design. He has said that it could take 5 years to fix the car and no one believes this. This year his priority would have been the new 2026 car ,but knowing Newey there is no ways he is going to allow the team to struggle.
With Newey's knowledge a few tweaks you would think would move the car into a top 3 performer and now we are seeing this play out. The new wing tested last week needed Newey's in put and this week we are seeing the results and one should not be surprised to see the car improve very quickly.
When your car is one of the slowest on the track all it would take is a few upgrades to move the team into the top 5 and then the top 3. These would be simple steps for the likes of Newey and would be just basic design changes that would maximize the current car and it's performance.
I do think many would have thought this would have happened slightly quicker, but one has to understand Newey had to understand the current design and then start to work with this. Newey was only allowed to work on the Aston martin design from January this year with his main task designing the new car for next season which has new regulations. I would guess that project is nearly complete and why he has now turned his attention to the current car as each point won is worth $1 million.