Aston Martin's Newey finding 2026 F1 regulations offer more room for innovation
Aston Martin managing technical partner Adrian Newey says the 2026 Formula 1 regulations offer more room for innovation and different approaches than he expected now he has started working on them.
Newey (pictured at left, above) joined Aston Martin from Red Bull in March, beginning work with a major focus on the 2026 regulations rather than the team’s current car, though he has been part of certain meetings to try and improve the immediate performance. While looking into the different opportunities provided by the new rules, Newey -- who led the design of the dominant Red Bull from the start of 2022 -- sees certain parallels this time around.
“My thoughts on the '26 regulations are similar to what my thoughts were about the big regulation change for 2022: initially thinking the regulations were so prescriptive that there wasn't much left here [for a designer], but then you start to drill into the detail and realize there's more flexibility for innovation and different approaches than first meets the eye,” Newey said.
“We saw that at the start of 2022, with teams taking really quite different directions. Now, of course, four seasons on, they've largely converged, but initially that wasn't the case. Variation between teams is great. It's all a bit boring if the cars look identical and the only way you can tell them apart is the livery.
“I think there's a high probability that in '26 we’ll see something similar to '22. There's enough flexibility in the regulations, and I'm sure people will come up with different solutions. Some of those will be dropped over the first two or three years as teams start to converge.”
Although 2022 saw Red Bull get its initial concept right to dominate the first three years of the ground effect era, Newey says the impact of the new power unit regulations will make it harder to earn an advantage solely through aerodynamics.
“The other aspect of this is that, for the first time I can remember, we've got both the chassis regulations and power unit regulations changing at the same time. This is... interesting... and slightly scary," he said. “Both the new aerodynamic rules and the PU regulations present opportunities. I would expect to see a range of aero solutions and there could be variation in PU performance across the grid to begin with – which is what happened when the hybrid regulations first came in, in 2014.
“Next year marks the start of our works partnership with Honda. I've got a lot of trust in Honda and a huge amount of respect for them, having worked with them before. They took a year out of F1 and so, to some extent, they're playing catch-up, but they're a great group of engineers and very much an engineering-led company.”
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