At Aston Martin, the flags are hanging at half-mast before the start of the Formula 1 season. The test drives were so disastrous that some people are already talking about a lost season. But one person doesn’t let the chaos bother him: Adrian Newey.
Adrian Newey has experienced pretty much everything during his Formula 1 career. What Aston Martin showed during the test drives in Bahrain may have surprised even the most successful engineer in premier class history. Nobody had taken into account the fact that the team he led and the car he built was by far the weakest in the field.
But Newey himself still remains cool – and how. Aston Martin ambassador Pedro de la Rosa revealed to renowned Formula 1 journalist Tom Clarkson what was going on behind the scenes and how the team boss eased his crew’s worries with a simple but clear announcement.
Newey has “taken total control”
“I spoke to Pedro de la Rosa and he told me that it is precisely these moments in which you can rely on Adrian Newey’s experience, because let’s not forget: he knows a lot about power units and chassis,” Clarkson reported on his conversation with de la Rosa on the “F1 Nation” podcast.
Clarkson continued: “So while the headlines look really bad, he came [Newey] into an engineering briefing and said: ‘OK, do this with the chassis and Honda, do that with the power unit!’ According to Pedro, he has taken total control.”
However, Newey also had to admit internally: It will take some time to fix all of Aston Martin’s problems. At the start of the season in Australia we won’t be ready yet. According to Japanese media, Honda has already promised the team that it will be able to fix the biggest construction sites by the second race of the season in China.
