Adrian Newey does not intend his move into the team principal role at Aston Martin to take him away from his car design role.

The team made the surprising announcement earlier this week that Newey will take over from Andy Cowell as team principal from next season. Cowell was appointed as team principal in January.

Newey said Cowell offered to move into his new position as chief strategy officer in order to better apply his expertise in power unit development. Cowell played a major role in masterminding Mercedes’ power unit programme when the current V6 hybrid turbos were introduced in 2014.

Allowing Cowell to focus on that area of the operation will improve Aston Martin’s chances of making a success of its new relationship with Honda, said Newey.

“It became very evident that with the challenge of the ’26 PU […] in terms of helping the three-way relationship between Honda, Aramco and ourselves, it’s absolutely his skill set,” he told Sky. “So he very magnanimously volunteered to be heavily involved in that through the first part of ’26.”

Newey, who joined the team in March as managing technical partner, said taking on the team principal role was logical for him as he planned to attend the opening races.

“That left a [question] of ‘okay, well who’s going to be TP?’ And 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,” he said.

However Newey made it clear his priority is to focus on the development of Aston Martin’s first car for F1’s incoming technical regulations.

“That’s really what I want to and need to do,” he said. “That’s what gets me out of bed in the morning, so I’m determined not to dilute that.”

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