Alonso: Adrian Newey will always have more impact than any driver
Before the official launch of the 2025 F1 season, Fernando Alonso stated to the AS newspaper that it is more important for a team to have an excellent Technical Director like Adrian Newey than an excellent driver like Lewis Hamilton.
Fernando Alonso, who will still be driving for Aston Martin this season, gave an interview to the newspaper AS. And according to him, Adrian Newey is more important than Lewis Hamilton for a team.
The Contribution of Adrian Newey
« Adrian Newey will always have more impact than any driver. Drivers come and go, there are 20 of us here trying to drive well, and we have achieved things to get to F1. I don’t know what Hamilton will bring or add to Ferrari, but it will surely be less than what a designer can bring. »
This is especially true when competing in the constructors’ championship: when Red Bull Racing was technically dominating the grid, the difference between Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez was less noticeable, and the gap in the number of points they earned respectively widened drastically when the team lost that superiority.
Driver changes in F1 are frequent, more so than a change in technical director. It often takes several years for design efforts to yield visible results in a championship, while a driver ideally only needs a few Grand Prix to adapt to a car. Adrian Newey started working at Red Bull in 2005, but it wasn’t until 2009 that the team finished second in the constructors’ championship. Fernando Alonso doesn’t really expect the car to work miracles as soon as this year:
Adrian will be a free spirit, we can’t tell him what to do. The day he arrives, if he can give us a hand in 2025, all the better. If he prefers to work solely for 2026, that’s also great, because it will mean that he has clear ideas and doesn’t want to lose a single day. I’ve asked Lawrence (Stroll) several times, and he always tells me that he doesn’t think we can control him.
Lewis’s performances at Ferrari?
The arrival of Lewis Hamilton at Ferrari is, of course, another major change of the 2025 season. However, according to Alonso, the internal competition at Mercedes has left its mark: « Lewis also suffered against Russell, he needs to regain confidence. »
But what results can we then expect for Lewis Hamilton with all these new developments? It’s difficult to say for the Aston Martin driver. When I arrived at Aston, it was a different organization; at Alpine, I felt comfortable with many people from the Renault days, while at Aston, I was the newcomer in everything. But from the first race, we were very fast. It’s more a matter of adapting to the car than anything else. Hamilton will have to understand how to drive this car, while Leclerc has more experience. Alonso obviously trusts Hamilton to shine, provided, of course, with a competitive car: We know his quality, and if he has a good car, he will undoubtedly be a strong contender.
Development challenges at Aston Martin F1 Team in 2024
After highlighting the necessity for Lewis to have a good car, he obviously hopes to have this chance as well. He reflects on the development of last year’s Aston Martin, regretting certain choices: We lost a few months on developments that we thought were effective, but ultimately did not work. We reverted to the aerodynamic packages from the beginning of the year, which penalized us a bit throughout the season, and it still penalizes us.
These setbacks have obviously caused them to accumulate several months of delay. However, fortunately, for Alonso, we have identified the cause of the problem, we know where the team was losing time trying to improve the car and why it didn’t always translate on the track.
Fortunately for Aston Martin, this unfruitful development should not continue: « Now, we have a new approach that we believe is more robust, and that’s what I would like to see. »
Hopes for 2025
Will this new approach bear fruit as early as this year?
“We’ll see,” replies Alonso, “we must be cautious. […] only three months have passed since Abu Dhabi. We’ve done everything possible, we’ve changed 95% of the car’s aerodynamics. I hope this will bring the results we want, but everyone works hard during the winter and it will be very tight. Last year already, many teams were within half a second, and I don’t expect anything different. We will have to make the right choices at every decision.”
We are therefore eagerly waiting to see if this year the presence of Adrian Newey at Aston Martin F1 Team will have a visibly noticeable influence on the car from the outside.
