Adrian Newey's very first Aston Martin F1 car broke cover at the Barcelona Shakedown last week. According to Newey, who joined Aston Martin as Managing Technical Partner last March, just before their new wind tunnel became fully operational, the team faced “a very compressed timescale and an extremely busy 10 months” to get the all-new challenger ready. “It's a completely new set of rules, which is a big challenge for all the teams, but perhaps more so for us. “That put us on the back foot by about four months, which has meant a very, very compressed research and design cycle. “Then it's worked through to the front and rear suspension – the front and rear suspension both have their own very important part to play in that manipulation of the flow field. “Now, whether other people come up with a similar solution to ours, we don't know and we won't until we start seeing other people's cars. With several rivals already taking note of the car, Newey admitted “the direction we've taken could certainly be interpreted as aggressive”, given “it's got quite a few features that haven't necessarily been done before”, while pointing to one of his trademarks. “The car is tightly packaged – much more tightly packaged than I believe has been attempted at Aston Martin Aramco before,” he commented. “This has required a very close working relationship with the mechanical designers to achieve the aerodynamic shapes we wanted, but I have to say that all the mechanical designers here have really embraced that philosophy. It hasn't made their life easy, quite the opposite, but they've really risen to the challenge.” As for what to expect from the AMR26 at the start of the season, and what might be to come in terms of updates, Newey said: “We've attempted to build something that we hope will have quite a lot of development potential. “What you want to try to avoid is a car that comes out quite optimised within its window but lacks a lot of development potential. We've tried to do the opposite, which is why we've really focused on the fundamentals, put our effort into those, knowing that some of the appendages – wings, bodywork, things that can be changed in season – will hopefully have development potential.”

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