Aston Martin team principal Adrian Newey is leading the hunt for his own replacement, according to reports in F1 media.
The Silverstone-based outfit have had a disastrous start to 2026, not having finished a race as of yet as Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso have both struggled with rather violent vibrations in their AMR26.
Aston Martin’s new power unit partnership with Honda has caused reliability and power output issues in the early stages of the year, and minimal running in pre-season testing has materialised into two double DNFs at the Australian and Chinese Grands Prix.
And design legend Newey – who was initially brought in as a managing technical partner but was given added team principal responsibilities at the end of 2025 – is reportedly now leading the search for a new team principal at the team.
Newey has claimed 26 world championships across his illustrious career in the sport, but is a car designer by trade, and has never before had the team principal responsibilities in any of his previous roles with Red Bull, McLaren, Williams or Leyton/March.
Planet F1 are reporting that he has been tasked with trying to find a full-time team boss for the outfit, with former McLaren boss Andreas Seidl thought to be a candidate for the role.
According to the above publication, Max Verstappen’s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase has also been contacted about the role, but has turned it down, content with his position at Red Bull.
GPFans have contacted Aston Martin for comment on the rumours that Newey could be set to stand down from his team principal role.
Is Christian Horner a candidate for Aston Martin?
One name that keeps cropping up when talking about the full-time team principal role at Aston Martin is Christian Horner.
Newey knows him well from their time spent together between 2006-2024 at Red Bull, where they claimed six constructors’ titles and eight drivers’ championships (Newey was on gardening leave for Verstappen’s most recent title, but the RB20 was his car design).
But there are mixed reports about how it ended between the pair when Newey left Red Bull, with rumours of a breakdown in their relationship following the allegations that were being levelled at Horner at the time.
Horner was cleared of all wrongdoing in an internal investigation, but was later sacked as Red Bull team principal for performance-based reasons, with Red Bull down in fourth in the constructors’ championship at the time.
The Brit has been linked with a return to F1 but in more of a team ownership-style role, with Alpine and Haas two of the other teams who have been mentioned as options for Horner.
A Horner-Newey reunion would surely reinvigorate the deflated Aston Martin team, and owner Lawrence Stroll certainly has the money to make it happen should that be the direction he wants to go down.