Adrian Newey, the Aston Martin team principal, has accepted the need for leadership restructure in the wake of the team’s nightmare start to the 2026 season, with Audi team principal Jonathan Wheatley having been sounded out about a senior role.
Aston Martin denied a report on motorsport.com on Thursday that Newey was “set to step down” as team principal, and would be “replaced by Wheatley”, dismissing it as “rumours”. A spokesperson told Telegraph Sport: “Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team remains fully committed to Adrian Newey as Managing Technical Partner & Team Principal.”
Privately, Telegraph Sport understands Newey has sounded out Wheatley and others, such as Andreas Seidl, the ex-McLaren team principal, and even Gianpiero Lambiase, Max Verstappen’s race engineer and head of racing at Red Bull, about a possible role.
Embarrassing start to season exposed Newey
Newey, 67, only took on the Aston Martin team principal job in November after Andy Cowell was redeployed to manage the team’s integration with engine manufacturer Honda.
In fairness, the celebrated designer heavily implied at the time that he might only be taking on the role on an interim basis. Explaining the decision for Cowell to focus on Honda, Newey said in Qatar: “To be perfectly honest, it became very evident that with the challenge of the 2026 PU [power unit], then, Andy’s skill set in terms of helping the three-way relationship between Honda, Aramco 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 team principal?”
He added: “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.”
As it happens, Newey has not done all the early races. He skipped China last weekend, a decision Mike Krack, who served as Aston Martin team principal himself between 2022 and 2024, claimed had been part of the “plan”.
The plan clearly changed in the wake of the team’s shambolic start to the season, in which Aston Martin have lurched from one crisis to the next. Neither Fernando Alonso nor Lance Stroll has managed to finish either of the first two races, a source of serious embarrassment for owner Lawrence Stroll given even newcomers Cadillac managed to get both their cars to the finish in China last weekend. But the problems began well before that. Aston Martin were late to launch their challenger. Then when they did launch they recorded the fewest laps of any team in pre-season testing. What running they did manage was unimpressive.
At an extraordinary press conference in Melbourne on the eve of the new campaign, Newey even admitted his drivers were worried about “permanent nerve damage” in their hands from the violent vibrations emanating from their car’s power unit.
Newey’s handling of that press conference, in which he threw the Honda Racing president Koji Watanabe, who was sitting alongside him, completely under the bus, is thought to have focused minds at Aston Martin, with an acceptance that Newey is not suited to being front of house.
He has never been a huge fan of dealing with the media anyway, but it is certainly madness to be paying the greatest designer in Formula One history £25m a year not to design the car, but instead to be dealing with hiring and firing and managing and talking to the media, none of which are Newey strong suits. Hence the discussions with Wheatley, Lambiase and Seidl.
Audi power struggle
Wheatley is the man hotly-tipped to come in. Although he has only been at the Hinwil-based team for 10 months, and it is a huge job, Telegraph Sport has heard rumours of tensions with Mattia Binotto, the head of the Audi F1 Project. So his departure could make sense. Wheatley is also said to have told people that his wife, who agreed to make the move with him, has not settled in Switzerland.
Audi declined to comment when contacted by Telegraph Sport.
Whether his arrival at Aston Martin, if it happens, will be the final piece of the jigsaw is anyone’s guess.
What about Christian Horner?
There remains a sense that Stroll wants or perhaps needs a chief executive of the calibre of Toto Wolff or Zak Brown to oversee the F1 project.
Christian Horner, of course, is available in the next few weeks, once his period of gardening leave ends following his dismissal by Red Bull last summer. He is known to want a F1 return. Indeed, in many respects that move makes the most sense – Horner is an experienced and proven operator.
But it remains to be seen whether Newey would stand for that, given how it ended between them at Red Bull. Newey joined Aston Martin in September 2024, having walked out on Red Bull earlier that year at the height of the Horner sexting controversy of which he was subsequently cleared.