Adrian Newey to Step Aside as Team Principal as Aston Martin Turns to Jonathan Wheatley.
By: Kayleigh Northall.
Adrian Newey is set to step down from his role as Aston Martin team principal, with Jonathan Wheatley poised to take over the position as the Silverstone‑based team looks to stabilise its leadership and refocus on performance. The move will see Newey return his full attention to technical matters, a role in which he has enjoyed unparalleled success throughout his Formula 1 career.
Newey joined Aston Martin in March 2025 as managing technical partner and minority shareholder, assuming responsibility for the team’s design and engineering direction. However, organisational changes later that year resulted in him also taking on the team principal role after Andy Cowell was moved into a strategic position. While the arrangement was presented as a logical short‑term solution, it was never viewed internally as an ideal long‑term structure.
Even at the time of his appointment, Newey acknowledged that the expanded role was driven largely by circumstance rather than ambition. With Aston Martin facing mounting competitive pressures, the demands of overseeing both technical development and day‑to‑day team operations have increasingly conflicted.
“Do I feel as if the team principal role is distracting me from my core job of trying to work with everybody, work on my own to come up with ideas, development directions et cetera? A little bit,” Newey admitted earlier this season, underlining the challenges of balancing the two positions.
Aston Martin’s difficult start to the campaign has only sharpened that focus. The team currently sits at the bottom of the constructors’ championship and has yet to finish a grand prix with either car. Reliability issues, particularly with the Honda power unit, have severely compromised performance, while cockpit vibrations have caused significant discomfort for the drivers, most notably Fernando Alonso.
Against that backdrop, team owner Lawrence Stroll has moved to install a full‑time team principal to oversee operations and provide leadership continuity. Jonathan Wheatley has emerged as the preferred candidate for the role, with the experienced executive expected to take charge once contractual matters are resolved.
Wheatley, who has held senior leadership positions across the paddock, is understood to be attracted by the opportunity to run Aston Martin with greater autonomy than he currently enjoys in a shared management structure. His appointment would mark Aston Martin’s fifth team principal in just over four years, highlighting the instability that has accompanied the team’s rapid expansion and heavy investment.
The change is intended to bring clarity to the team’s structure. Under the revised arrangement, Wheatley would assume responsibility for operational leadership, race team management and long‑term organisational direction, while Newey would focus exclusively on technical development as managing technical partner.
Newey’s value to Aston Martin remains unquestioned. His designs have delivered 26 combined drivers’ and constructors’ championships, and he continues to believe the current car has the potential to develop into a competitive package once its fundamental issues are addressed. However, freeing him from administrative and managerial duties is seen as essential if that potential is to be realised.
Newey himself has previously suggested that returning to a purely technical role would better serve the team. “Since I’m going to be doing all the early races anyway, it doesn’t actually particularly change my workload,” he said last year, downplaying the significance of his temporary leadership role.
For Aston Martin, the appointment of Wheatley represents an attempt to impose stability after a period of frequent change at the top. While the team’s long‑term ambitions remain unchanged, the revised structure is designed to ensure that those ambitions are supported by clear leadership and technical focus.
If confirmed, the transition would allow Aston Martin to move forward with a more conventional and sustainable management model — one that places Newey back where he has always been most effective and gives Wheatley the authority to steer the team through a critical phase of its development.
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