As he finally arrives at Aston Martin, Adrian Newey insists that he is making no promises.

Of course, when you've designed championship winning cars for three different teams over four decades, it is widely accepted that you will continue, which is exactly why Aston Martin signed him, while Ferrari failed.

However, on arriving at the team following a period of gardening leave after parting ways with Red Bull, the Briton warned not to expect miracles.

"I'm just looking forward to it and what will be, will be," he told the BBC's Back at Base podcast. "The first target really is to get to know everybody here," he continued, "understand how everybody works, and try to integrate myself with everybody.

"It's talking to the drivers, it's talking to my fellow engineers, trying to bounce ideas off them. Getting that sort of creative flow going."

Newey's main focus will be the 2026 car and the rules overhaul, however, following an uninspiring test, the Briton will almost certainly need to spend some time working on the team's 2025 contender, surely one of the least impressive over the course of the three days in Bahrain.

Though unhappy with the lack of track time, and a number of technical issues, including a problem with telemetry, Fernando Alonso sought to play down any signs of disappointment.

"We're looking forward to Australia," he said. "The car is faster, the car and all the data that we have is correlating well and then we see more downforce in all the speeds and all the corners.

"Obviously it's a relative gain comparing everyone else, everyone improves," he admitted, " but we will find out in Australia. It's crucial for us to put things in place, and to have a perfect synchronisation between everyone in the factory and correlation between the wind tunnel, our own wind tunnel, for the first time, and trackside.

"The '26 rules are around the corner," he added, "and we need to make sure that the rest of the team is ready to apply all the efforts."

Asked how he perceived the packing order, he said: "I don't know much because I didn't look at the test. After lunch I was going back to the hotel and I was relaxing in the hotel and coming in at night for the meeting, so I know everything about our team and our testing programme.

"I know that Sainz was first," he said, referring to Thursday, "but even today I don't know who is first and second. I guess the top four teams, they will keep an advantage, especially at the beginning of the year, but let's hope we can be closer and closer to them.

"I'm looking forward to it, as usual," he said of Melbourne. "We've been doing a number of promotional days, media days, videos, interviews, sponsor events, and we want to go racing, so I'm looking forward to it."