Outside Line: Can Adrian Newey turn the worst car in Formula 1 history with the AMR26B set for Zandvoort?
F1 NewsWednesday, 17 June 2026 at 16:55
Let's start off first and foremost. Adrian Newey is Formula 1's greatest designer in terms of how many cars he has designed - 14 Drivers' Championships and 12 Constructors' Championships - you can never erase from history.
But right now, as it stands in sport, you are only as good as your last game. Or in Formula 1, as a designer, you're only as good as your last car.
In my opinion, the AMR26 is the worst Formula 1 car ever produced, in my opinion. It's up there with contraptions rolled out over the years like Simtek, Lola, Coloni, Andrea Moda Formula, Hispania Racing Team and the like. AKA the worst teams ever to produce Formula 1 cars. Make no mistake, Newey's first Aston Martin is right up there.
The only massive, and I mean massive, difference is the eye-watering amounts of money that has been spent to get this Lawrence Stroll vanity project to this embarrasing point. Their competitors for the worst F1 car ever built were all on shoe string budget's. Built in home garages of aficionados. But not Aston Martin of today.
For the AMR26, the fruits of the coming together of the most expensive racing team ever construed with the 'greatest' mind/s in the sport, Stroll has spent the kind of fortune that would save a nation from bankruptcy. All to persevere with the Formula 1 dream for his son to become world champion, or at least win a race. That is likely to never happen.
Alonso in a winning car will still win
But at the same time, they hired Fernando Alonso, a guy who never gives up fighting. I really do believe that in a race winning car today, he would be able to do what Lewis Hamilton did and does. The Spanish veteran's passion, his drive, and his racecraft are not diminished. He just hasn't had a car for over a year now that is anywhere near his standards.
Granted, Alonso is known for his poor decision making. But let's be honest, ahead of this season, with Newey in your corner. More money than has ever been spent on a Formula 1 operation being thrown at the car, and Honda on board, inking that deal seemed to be the greatest move he ever made in his Formula 1 career. To all of us. But it hasn't transpired.
Adrian Newey has dropped the ball big time. Everyone in the paddock believed he would deliver a race winning car from the outset. The amount of money and the kind of deal Stroll flung at him suggested that this would be the final glorious chapter to Newey's great Formula 1 story.
When it was realised that this new Newey masterpiece was actually a shitbox, not only that, a dangerous shitbox, the kind of shitbox that is a health scare for Alonso and Stroll, you had to wonder, has he lost the plot?
In 2025 Alonso was seven-tenths down on pole, four second this year
They talk of progress. What progress? Alonso was 4.136s off the pace at an all too familiar track like Barcelona during Qualifying last Saturday. Last year Alonso was P10 on the grid with a lap time 0.738s down on the pole winning time. Those four seconds are not going to be easy to recoup.
In fact, I'm going to suggest those four seconds mean you rip up the whole project and start from scratch, because this concept that Newey delivered is atrocious, inappropriate, out of touch with modern Formula 1.
Then Newey himself flung Honda under the bus by suggesting that the people they had on the project were not up to scratch and they only realised that when they got delivery of the engines.
Allow me to be Lawrence Stroll at my huge desk, face-to-face with my designer: "Seriously! Adrian Newey! When you signed with Aston Martin did you go to Honda first thing to see your Power Units? And if you did, why did you not set up a camp in very close proximity until the package was up to scratch?
"Because you, of all people, know how Honda can drop the ball. With that history in mind, Aston Martin should have had a bubble, a hub, a room, a bedroom, and a bathroom for you to live in next to that engine while it was in gestation.
"The fact that you did not do that, or did not command one of the next highest-ranking people in your operation to do so, is a failing on your part as the technical mastermind who came there to save the ship."
No Zoom calls?
"And we cannot accept this story that you only realised later that the juniors were on the job at Honda. Zoom calls. You must have them.
[Or does Adrian Newey not do Zoom calls? Does he still do faxes? He's on a drawing board, after all.]
[Or does Adrian Newey not do Zoom calls? Does he still do faxes? He's on a drawing board, after all.]
"You do a Zoom call with anyone, sit there for half an hour, and you know exactly who's who in the zoo on the other end. The motormouth, the silnet type. The good cop. The bad cop. The one who knows his shit and the one who thinks he knows his shit.
"And when you sat there after a couple of Zoom calls a year or more ago, while they were still building the engine, you did not realise Honda had Mickey and Mouse on this job? Should you not have reacted, gone there, and sorted it out?"
That's me if I were Lawrence. Many questions. Whatever the case, shame on Aston Martin Team Principal and Managing Technical Partner Newey for the state of this operation.
All the other F1 team principals, even when their teams are performing badly, have something to say. Instead, we have Mike Krack soundbites. Who cares what he says? We want to hear what Adrian Newey has to say. Accountability. Everyone is very busy in F1; Newey must find the time to explain away the foibles of hhis doing. That's his job.
Zandvoort cannot come soon enough
Zandvoort, they say, is when Newey and his propeller heads will deliver the car he should have delivered six months ago. So they say. And I wait with bated breath for the Aston Martin AMR26B.
I don't know what Stroll Senior has got up to in his life, but if you believe in karma, this guy has obviously done some bad stuff in previous lives and is paying the price in this one. Because what he's getting now, if karma is to be believed, is insane.
No one has pumped more into a team. Stroll Senior has ticked every box imaginable. Infrastructure. Sponsorship. Image. Factory. Personnel. Trying to make Aston Martin the British Ferrari, sort of.
But as it stands, they are a joke. With all those resources, they produced the worst car I've witnessed in Formula 1 history, Full stop. The insanity comes in when you factor in the extraordinary amount of money that has been spent trying to attain the dream.
I'm sure the chief naval architect Thomas Andrews, who led the design the Titanic, was a brilliant enngineer. I'm sure before the 'big one' he designed amazing boats. Strong boats. State-of-the-art boats. Fast boats. Big boats. But then he designed the Titanic. And went down with it.
Honestly, when I step back and look at the Formula 1 narrative, and focus specifically on Aston Martin and the AMR26B coming up in Zandvoort, I can only wonder if that car will be Newey's Titanic orwill he will conjure a miracle that slashes that four second gap eyesore by August.
Newey Formula 1 cars that flopped
The most infamous was the McLaren MP4-18, a radical 2003 design that never raced. Conceived to challenge Ferrari, the car suffered aerodynamic instability, crash test failures and persistent reliability issues. Newey later admitted a flaw in the car's vortex generation created serious downforce problems, making it one of Formula 1's most famous failures.
Earlier in his career, the 1989 Leyton House March CG891 disappointed after the promise shown by its predecessor, struggling with both reliability and competitiveness.
Newey's first Red Bull designs, the RB3 and RB4, also fell short of expectations. While both showed flashes of speed, reliability problems prevented race-winning success. However, they helped lay the groundwork for the title-winning RB5 and the dominant era that followed.
Other setbacks included the Williams FW16 of 1994, which Newey later acknowledged had aerodynamic shortcomings, which cost Ayrton Senna his life. And of course the winless Red Bull RB11 in 2015.
Yet those failures became valuable lessons. Rather than defining Newey's career, they helped shape the designer who would become Formula 1's most successful technical genius.
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