Adrian Newey spots innovation opportunities in ‘scary’ F1 2026 rules
Design guru Adrian Newey shares his views on the major rules shake-up coming to F1 in 2026.
Legendary F1 designer Adrian Newey believes there is enough “flexibility” in the 2026 regulations that will enable teams to come up with different solutions.
Newey, F1’s most successful and famous designer, has taken up a new role as Aston Martin’s managing technical partner after spending nearly 20 years at Red Bull.
With the 66-year-old Briton’s highly-anticipated arrival at Aston Martin coming too late to influence the design of the team’s 2025 car, Newey is mainly focused on the major new technical rule changes coming in 2026.
Speaking in an interview on Aston Martin’s website, Newey revealed his expectations for F1’s new rules set.
"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 realise 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. 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.”
F1 2026 poses ‘slightly scary’ challenge
Aston Martin are hoping to capitalise on the looming regulation shake-up to try in a bid to move up the order and get closer to their lofty ambitions of winning world titles in the coming years.
Their Canadian billionaire owner Lawrence Stroll has invested hundreds of millions in a new factory at Silverstone, including a state-of-the-art wind tunnel, beaten off competition to secure Newey’s services, and secured a factory engine deal with Honda which starts next year.
In 2026, F1 will introduce a new generation of cars featuring unprecedented changes impacting both aerodynamics and power units.
"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,” Newey 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."
Lewis regularly attends Grands Prix for Crash.net around the world. Often reporting on the action from the ground, Lewis tells the stories of the people who matter in the sport.
