Newey: I will be able to keep an eye on the drawing board

In a bombshell dropped ahead of the 2025 Qatar Grand Prix, Newey was announced as Aston Martin's team boss following a managerial restructure that will see current boss and CEO Andy Cowell take on the position of Chief Strategy Officer.

Through his new role, Cowell will basically be the liaison between Aston Martin, their works power unit partner, Honda, their fuel supplier, Aramco, as well as the lubricant partner, Valvoline, which somehow makes sense given Cowell's previous role as the head of the powertrain division at Mercedes.

This means that Newey, who joined Aston Martin from Red Bull Racing at the start of 2025 in the position of Technical Managing Partner, will have much more on his plate, not to mention that the Team Principal role does require a different personality than the private and quiet Newey, who has always been used to working in the background without having to handle the politics.

Newey claimed, while speaking to Sky Sports F1 in Qatar, that focusing on Aston Martin's 2026 challenger is "really what I want to and need to do" adding: "That's what gets me out of bed in the morning, so I'm determined not to dilute that."

He went on explaining how the changes at Aston Martin came about; he said: "To be perfectly honest, it became very evident that with the challenge of the 2026 Power Unit, that Andy's skillset in terms of helping the three-way relationship between Honda, Aramco, and ourselves is absolutely his skillset.

"So he very magnanimously volunteered to be heavily involved in that through the first part of 2026. That left, kind of, 'Well, who is going to be Team Principal?'

"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.

"I will be able to keep an eye on the drawing board and front-end design work," Newey concluded.

Prior to Aston Martin's recently announced changes, there was a lot of speculation that former Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner was in talks with the Silverstone-based squad to join them, with some reports even claiming that Newey gave his former boss a tour of Aston Martin's brand-new facilities away from the media's prying eyes.

GrandPrix247 understands that while Horner is still a candidate to take on the Team Principal role, former McLaren and Audi boss Andreas Seidl is also in contention.

This suggests that Newey is basically keeping the Team Principal seat warm on an interim basis until Aston Martin decides who will take on the role for the long term.