Fernando Alonso blow as ‘realistic’ Adrian Newey, Aston Martin timeline predicted

Fernando Alonso and Aston Martin will not be winning races or challenging for the World Championship in F1 2026 despite the signing of Adrian Newey.

That is the prediction of F1 business expert Mark Gallagher, who believes Newey will need up to five years for his impact to be felt at Aston Martin .

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Aston Martin announced the signing of Newey as the team’s managing technical partner earlier this month in a major coup for team owner Lawrence Stroll, with the F1 design guru set to arrive from reigning World Champions Red Bull.

Newey stands as the most decorated individual in F1 history, having contributed to more than 200 race wins and achieved a combined total of 25 Drivers’ and Constructors’ World Championships with Red Bull, McLaren and Williams.

Aston Martin’s signing of the technical genius has raised expectations that Alonso could yet secure a landmark third World Championship, with the F1 2026 season marking the 20th anniversary of his second title triumph with Renault.

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The Silverstone-based team are aiming to make considerable progress when the F1 2026 rules are implemented, with the team poised to enter a works partnership with Honda, Red Bull’s current engine suppliers, for the sport’s new era.

Under the terms of his Red Bull exit, negotiated by former F1 team owner Eddie Jordan, Newey will be free to start work with Aston Martin as soon as 2025, crucially sidestepping the period of gardening leave commonplace in F1 staff contracts to lead the team’s preparations for F1 2026.

However, Gallagher, who previously worked in F1 for the likes of Jordan, Red Bull and engine manufacturer Cosworth, is convinced that Aston Martin will require up to five years to emerge as a leading force with the team still at the start of their rise.

Appearing on the Flat Chat podcast, he said: “I’ve talked to my former boss, Mr Jordan and he assures me – and he’s talked quite openly about this – that the negotiation with Lawrence Stroll was actually incredibly straightforward.

“They came up with a number that got agreed to and the rest is history and Adrian’s made the move.

“He was keen to stay in England. I think that’s something that played a factor.

“Yes, he could have gone to Ferrari, but who knows what the structure of that deal might have involved in terms of keeping a footprint here in the UK.

“The Aston Martin solution is extremely elegant. Eddie made the point that he always wanted Adrian Newey to design Jordans – he finally got him to do it, only 25 years later!

“Aston Martin’s upgrades this year have been disappointing, really disappointing.

“I think it’s early days for them with a new factory and all that’s within it, all of the tools, and I think this is one of the things [remind me of] McLaren – all those years in the wilderness that they had. It takes a long time to get it right.

“This is why a company like Audi, coming into Formula 1, really needs to understand the scale of the challenge that they are up against.

“All of the teams are not messing around, they’re all trying really quite hard and some of them are very, very good at what they do.

“And although Toto Wolff, may find it incredibly dispiriting for Mercedes to no longer be the top team, Mercedes is still a top team and doing a great job, and has won grands prix this year and is packed full of smart people – as is Ferrari, as is McLaren and Red Bull.

“And Aston Martin, just because Lawrence has spent a shed load of money, it doesn’t mean that they’re going to move to the front.

“It’s about people now. It’s about the tools being in the hands of people who work together in a certain way, who agree on short, medium and long-term technical design strategies and implement that strategy and also adapt if they need to.

“It’s step by step. You aren’t going to change everything quickly in this business.

“Aston Martin had that beautiful period of time when Fernando joined the team and they were going well and it was all terribly exciting, but that was then and this is now and things have moved on, so it’ll be really interesting to see.

“You look at Adrian joining Aston and he’s talking about basically the second half of his 60s – from [the age of] 65 to 70 – so over the next five years.

“To me, that feels like a realistic time frame within which he can move Aston Martin forward.

“But when you go online and you see the response to Adrian joining the team – ‘oh, this means Fernando is going to win next year’s World Championship or they’ll be winning grands prix in 2026 – that’s not going to happen.

“They’re not going to suddenly leapfrog all of the smart people in these other teams.

“Aston Martin this year is again an example of what happens when you’re trying a number of things on the car and, because of the interaction from the front wing backwards – you change engine covers, you change floor design, sidepods or whatever – it’s the impact of all of these changes together and the really complex interaction between components on the car.”

Alonso is currently contracted to Aston Martin until at least the end of the F1 2026 season, by which time he will be 45.

Appearing on the Formula For Success podcast earlier this year, Alonso’s manager Flavio Briatore claimed that 2026 is likely to be the two-time title winner’s last season with Alonso to decide whether he wants to stay on for “one more year.”

He said: “I don’t know [about his future].

“If you ask me if Fernando wants to continue after we finish in the contract, our last year will be 2026 for the moment.

“What he wants to do after, I don’t know. Does he want to continue for one more year?

“The performance is there. You see the performance of Fernando, it’s there. It’s not a question of him losing concentration, during the race he’s always there.

“If he’s 11th, he wants to be 10th. If he’s 10th, he want to be ninth. He wants the car to be competitive. He’s qualifying well, he’s racing well.

“I don’t know, honestly, if he wants to stop with 2026 as his last year or if he wants to go ahead. Honestly, I don’t know.

“It depends on the feeling he has about racing and the timing, I don’t know if he’ll have a family at the time and whatever.

“But for sure, he is somebody unique. I’ve never seen somebody like that, so determined every day, every day, every day. Never give up. Unbelievable.”

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