Newey says Aston Martin upgrade showed promising results in Hungary

Adrian Newey said Aston Martin’s upgraded car showed “promising results” in its first on-track session at the Hungarian Grand Prix, giving the team an early reading on its first big performance package of the 2025 season. The update arrived before the summer break, after Aston Martin had spent much of the year near the back of the grid.

The timing underlined how much was at stake. BBC Sport said Aston Martin were 10th of the 11 teams in the constructors’ championship when the upgrade was announced, with just one point from the Monaco Grand Prix. Formula 1 said the Hungarian package ran to 16 separate FIA submissions and touched almost every area of the car, while Newey had previously described the target as a “large step” rather than a marginal gain.

Friday’s running at the Hungaroring offered the first public test. BBC Sport’s live practice coverage said McLaren’s Lando Norris topped both sessions, leaving Aston Martin to judge its new parts against the benchmark rather than against the front of the field. That matters for a team that has been chasing a meaningful jump in form: a clean first run can validate the package, but lap time in free practice remains the sharper measure of whether an upgrade has changed the competitive order.

Aston Martin’s own Hungarian Grand Prix page later described the weekend as “a solid weekend from start to finish” and said the team headed into the summer shutdown on a positive note after securing a double points finish at the Hungarian Grand Prix. That was a clear improvement on the single-point return the team carried into the race, but it did not by itself settle whether the new package had moved Aston Martin out of the lower reaches of the midfield.

The contrast is the key point in Hungary. A car that was 10th of 11 before the upgrade and still faced Norris setting the pace on Friday was not transformed overnight. Yet the double points finish gave Aston Martin something more concrete than optimism: a result that suggested the package did at least move the team in the right direction, even if the scale of the step remained to be proven over a wider run of races.