Cardile promises Aston Martin a ‘completely new car’ for 2027

Aston Martin’s miserable 2026 campaign may yet prove valuable if the lessons learned from its struggles can be channelled into a radically different 2027 challenger, with the Silverstone outfit confirming that next year’s car will be built virtually from scratch.

The team arrived this season with expectations soaring after Adrian Newey’s arrival and the switch to Honda power, but reality has been far less forgiving.

Aston Martin has managed just three points and sits 10th in the Constructors’ standings, leaving its ambitious project badly in need of a reset.

That reset now appears to be firmly in sight. Team Silverstone’s Chief Technical Officer, Enrico Cardile, has revealed that although the AMR27 will evolve conceptually from the direction taken this year, Aston Martin has deliberately placed no restrictions on what it can change – promising what he calls a “completely new car.”

Aston Martin ready to start again for 2027

Cardile, who joined Aston Martin from Ferrari in 2025, has offered perhaps the clearest indication yet that the team is refusing to let its troubled 2026 concept dictate the shape of its next challenger.

Asked how much the AMR27 will evolve from this year's car, Cardile was unequivocal:

“Every single part will be new. Everything will have been improved,” he said. “But conceptually, it will be an evolution of the direction we took with this year’s car.

“We’re on the right path now, but we’re not tied to it.

“Let’s put it this way: when it comes to tackling the ’27 project, we haven’t placed any constraints on ourselves in terms of trying to carry anything over from the previous car.

“In this sense, it will be a completely new car, and it gives us the freedom and mindset to achieve what we want.”

After a season in which the AMR26 has struggled to deliver on the promise surrounding Newey's arrival and the Honda partnership, the prospect of a completely fresh design offers the team a chance to escape the compromises of its current concept.

There have already been signs that Aston Martin is beginning to understand its problems. A B-specification car arrived in Hungary before Honda introduced an engine upgrade at Zandvoort, where Fernando Alonso secured the team's best result of 2026 with ninth place.

But those developments appear to be viewed less as the solution than as pieces of a much larger learning exercise.

Every lesson now points towards AMR27

Cardile makes clear that Aston Martin’s remaining races are increasingly being viewed through the prism of 2027. The objective is not simply to salvage results from a difficult campaign, but to squeeze every possible piece of information from the AMR26.

“I think I’ll only want to talk about 2027,” he said. ““Our task now is to extract as much information as we can from 2026 because all of that will guide the 2027 project.

“From now on, it’s a daily challenge in every area: finding more downforce, reducing weight, giving the engineering group more time to run in the wind tunnel, to revisit concepts, to refine components.

“By the end of the year, I expect most of our conversation will be about what we’ve learned and how it’s shaping the 2027 car.”

That learning process comes at a particularly interesting moment for F1. The 2027 regulations will bring another significant technical shift, with changes to the power unit and further alterations to the chassis and aerodynamic package.

Among the most significant changes will be the reshaping of the front section of the floor, creating a new aerodynamic problem for every team to solve.

“The most obvious changes [for 2027] are on the power unit side: five per cent extra fuel, some adjustments to energy storage and deployment and some finer tweaks,” he explained.

“On the chassis side, the changes are fewer but still significant. The biggest is to what’s often called the ‘bib’ or ‘tea tray’ at the front of the floor.

“The leading edge has been moved by about 300 millimetres, which allows you to run the front of the car lower. That brings a different set of aerodynamic characteristics.

Read also:

• De la Rosa: Newey leadership has kept Aston ‘calm and united’

“There’s also a slightly shallower rear wing to reduce downforce, some changes to the front of the floor – the ‘bear claws’ or ‘fingers’ reducing from five to three – and the removal of various tricks teams have been using around the exhaust and rear wing.

“The key one for us is that front-of-floor change. It gives everyone a different aero challenge to solve.

“Because we’ve effectively been forced to grow up quickly as a team over the last 12 months, we’re in a much better place to capitalise on the regulation changes than we would have been a year ago.

“We’re a much more mature organisation now, and that leaves me very optimistic about what’s to come.”

That confidence provides an intriguing counterpoint to Aston Martin’s current plight.

A team languishing 10th with just three points might not appear to be an obvious candidate for optimism, but the circumstances surrounding 2027 could change the equation considerably.

A clean-sheet car, a new aerodynamic challenge and a technical organisation that Cardile believes has matured rapidly all give Aston Martin reasons to believe that the painful lessons of 2026 could ultimately prove valuable.

And with every component of the AMR27 effectively open to reinvention, the team will have little excuse for carrying yesterday’s mistakes into tomorrow’s car.

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via X and Facebook