Adrian Newey says Aston Martin's quest to become a competitive team will be hampered because "some of our tools are weak".

The design legend joined the team in March and is at a grand prix with the team for the first time in Monaco this weekend.

Newey has been signed on a five-year contract that could be worth as much as £30m a year including bonuses and add-ons as they seek to become world champions.

Aston Martin have built a new factory at their Silverstone base, but Newey singled out its new simulator as a weak spot.

Newey said: "It's fair to say that some of our tools are weak. Particularly the driver-in-the-loop simulator needs a lot of work because it's not correlating at all at the moment, which is a fundamental research tool."

The 65-year-old said that Aston Martin would need to "sort out a plan to get it where it needs to be, but that's probably a two-year project in truth".

They are seventh in the constructors' championship after seven races this season.

Two and a half months into his time with the team, Newey said: "There's a lot of individually very, very good people. We just need to try to get them working together, perhaps in a slightly better organised way.

"That's simply a result of the roots of the team at Jordan, that became Force India, that became Racing Point, and was as such always a small but slightly over-performing team, to now in a very short space of time a very big team that the truth is has been underperforming this year."

Newey, who joins the team after an illustrious career with Williams, McLaren and Red Bull, said one of the factors he was looking forward to in Monaco was working for the first time at a live event with 2005 and 2006 world champion Fernando Alonso.

"Fernando, he's such a cool character," Newey said. "He's been an enemy for many years, along with Lewis (Hamilton), and I think I've said before that you can only work with so many drivers, but two drivers I always wanted that I felt I would enjoy working with, were Lewis and Fernando, and I couldn't work with both, so at least I got one of them.

"It's only when you get to the racetrack that you really start to develop that relationship, so I'm looking forward to that developing a little bit this season, but particularly next season."

He added that he felt that Lance Stroll, the son of team owner Lawrence, "has an unfairly bad rap, on average", adding: "Any driver who gets to Formula 1 is clearly very good, but I think Lance is much better than people who've been very poor."

Asked about rumours that Aston Martin could try to attract four-time world champion Max Verstappen, with whom Newey worked at Red Bull, Newey said: "If we're to ever attract Max, the first thing we have to do is make a fast car."

He said he had "no idea" when Aston Martin might be in a position to provide that.

Newey has been working full-time on the design of Aston Martin's 2026 car, which will race to the new chassis and engine rules being introduced next season, and for the first time with a Honda engine as the Japanese company become Aston's works partner.

"I had a weekend off two weeks ago," he said. "Other than that it's been pretty much full-on since I started in March. My wife, she kind of says I go into a design trance, and I can understand what she means.

"When I get into a period of intense concentration I tend to not see left and right. All my processing power is going into the one area, which is trying to work with everybody to design a fast racing car."

The 2026 rules feature a change in the engines that increases the proportion of the power provided by the electrical element of the hybrid engine to about 50%, and introduce movable front and rear wings as part of attempts to harness sufficient electrical energy for the engines to work effectively.

Newey said: "When I first looked at the 2026 rules, my first reaction was, 'God, this doesn't leave much.' But then you start to drill into the detail, and there is a reasonable amount of flexibility. Of course, I'd always like more.

"I'd imagine you'll see some different solutions at the start of next year. Then, of course, as has happened with these regs, three or four seasons in, everybody starts to converge."