Like Indiana Jones snatching his misplaced fedora from under a rapidly descending stone doorway, Aston Martin’s timing was dramatically close to the edge this week. The team arrived for the Barcelona ‘shakedown week’ late on the third of the five days and only achieved a handful of laps when its AMR26 emerged from the garage on the afternoon of the fourth.
Aston Martin had admitted – albeit quietly and grudgingly – that it was likely to be late and therefore miss at least one of its three permitted days of running. But in truth, this was always going to be on the cards given the involvement of talismanic engineer Adrian Newey, a creative and competitive force to be reckoned with – and a man with a history of pushing development as long as possible so as to arrive with a more mature and competitive package than his rivals.
