Adrian Newey reveals ‘fear’ as wife complains about F1 ‘design trance’

Adrian Newey has admitted that a “fear of failure” is part of his motivation to design the most competitive F1 car possible for Aston Martin.

F1 design legend Newey is working full-time on the design of Aston Martin’s 2026 car amid the new chassis and engine rules being introduced next season.

In an enlightening interview conducted on behalf of Aston Martin sponsor Ma’aden that was released on Thursday, Newey revealed that his wife has complained about him being in a “design trance”.

“Some of the motivation is that fear of failure,” Newey confessed.

"I've tried to learn to use that constructively, because it's the difference between too much pressure, or pressure mismanaged, causing mistakes, versus leading to quite a focused and tunnel vision-like state.

"My wife, over the last three, four months, since I've joined the team, complains that I'm in a design trance, and I understand what she means, that I don't see left and right, and I'm probably not terribly sociable.

"What limited processing power I have is all concentrated on the task at hand, given these pressing deadlines. But that's not a state to stay in for too long, and that all sounds quite egotistical as well.

"It's really ultimately all about the team and how we work together."

Asked what he expects in 2026, Newey replied: "The honest answer is, I have absolutely no idea. We are in a period of transformation.

"We've, as a team, grown rapidly. It's really in a now settling down phase. Having grown hugely in numbers, we now need to settle everybody down, get them working well together.

"I've never been a believer in saying we will now achieve this or now achieve that. I think the satisfaction comes from working together to move forwards. If we can achieve that in 2026, that will be the first tick."

Newey sheds light on design process

Newey provided a fascinating insight into his approach to designing an F1 car, and revealed that his preferred method involves one-to-one meetings with engineers.

"We are a team of around 300 engineers," Newey explained. ”Collaboration of course is the most important single aspect and in many ways more than individual talents within the organisation.

"It's how we all work together [and] make sure that we communicate and we extract the most from each other.

"For me personally, what does that mean? Well, it means I spend probably around 50% of my day at the moment working with the other engineers, either at a one-to-one level, gathered around a CAD [computer-aided design] station, or in meetings.

"I generally, if I'm honest, prefer the former, because I think one-to-one meetings are quite often where you can do the brainstorm ones.

"The big meetings, if you're not careful, become procedural information exchanges without actually coming up with new ideas, which is, of course, the important bit. So we need a mixture.”

Newey also shed light on the deadlines Aston Martin face to be ready in time for the 2026 season, with the first behind-closed doors test taking place in late January.

"We're under intense pressure for deadlines to get the major architectural parts of the car, which is the gearbox, followed by the chassis, the front suspension, the rear suspension, etc, released in time for testing in January," he added.

"In truth, [I'm] probably spending a bit more time than I would like, about 50% of my time, at the drawing board or looking at the CFD [computational fluid dynamics], the vehicle dynamic programmes, etc, trying to make sure that we're coming up with a concept that we're all happy with.

"I never want it to not be with everybody's involvement and buy-in."