Adrian Newey is leading Aston Martin’s hunt for a new team principal. PlanetF1.com can reveal that the 67-year-old is leading the squad’s evaluation of the market over recent months.
Aston Martin is seeking a new team principal to work alongside Adrian Newey to strengthen its top-level management. The process of finding a new team principal is said to have begun in late 2025, commencing upon Newey’s assumption of the team principal position.
Newey Steps into Team Principal Role
Newey stepped into the team principal role at Aston Martin in November 2025, eight months after starting work at Lawrence Stroll’s squad as managing technical partner. Crucially, Newey had been tempted by a minority shareholding, placing him above any existing management in the company’s hierarchy.
Cowell’s Role Change After Newey’s Arrival
Cowell, who had been the team boss at Aston Martin, had been tempted out of a years-long sabbatical from F1 to take up the senior role. Following Newey’s arrival, Cowell is believed to have had fundamental disagreements with him on the direction of the team’s development and focus.
Cowell thus found himself moved aside, with his new responsibility falling in the area of power unit integration.
“To be perfectly honest, it became very evident that, with the challenge of the ’26 PU, Andy’s skillset, in terms of helping the three-way relationship between Honda, Aramco, and ourselves, is absolutely his skillset,” Newey told Sky F1 following the switch.
“So he very magnanimously volunteered to be heavily involved in that through the first part of ’26.”
Newey’s Focus Remains on Car Design
Newey taking over the principal role was somewhat surprising. Newey is known for being a reluctant public figure and, instead, preferring to focus on car performance and departmental optimisation.
His self-appointment in the leadership role always had an air of the temporary about it, and Newey did little to dispel that notion.
“That left [the question], ‘OK, well who’s going to be TP?’” he said, emphasising that he was determined not to “dilute” his focus away from car design.
“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.”
Indeed, sources at the time of the change in management structure indicated a hypothetical six-month timeline for Newey to take on the role. PlanetF1.com understands that a lengthy period of evaluation and negotiation with several candidates for the role has been underway since even before.