Adrian Newey has a vision for Aston Martin and the incoming F1 technical regulations

Aston Martin’s newest engineer spoke at length about the incoming 2026 F1 technical regulations

In the days before the Miami Grand Prix, Aston Martin driver Fernando Alonso sat down with the media, including SB Nation, and talked about legendary engineer Adrian Newey and the team’s plans for the 2026 season.

Now, Newey’s vision may be coming to life.

Aston Martin released an extensive interview with the living legend, who joined the team this spring as its new Managing Technical Partner. In the wide-ranging interview, Newey offered his latest thoughts on the incoming technical regulations, which are set to shake up Formula 1 next season.

While earlier in the year it seemed Newey was raising a red flag about the incoming regulations, now it appears he has a vision for how to proceed heading into the new era.

“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,” began Newey when asked about the incoming regulations.

Newey then went on to predict that 2026 might look a lot like 2022, when teams brought drastically different concepts to the track. Chief among those, of course, was the infamous “zero-pod” concept that Mercedes implemented that season.

“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,” said Newey.

“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.”

Newey also pointed to the fact that not only are the chassis regulations changing, but so too are the power unit regulations. Under the incoming regulations, there will be a 50/50 split between the power provided by the internal combustion engine and the battery component.

The engineer believes this also creates increased “opportunities” for teams, similar to when hybrid power units were first introduced in 2014.

“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. Both the new aerodynamic rules and the PU [power unit] 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.”

Newey joining the team and focusing on the upcoming set of regulations may be exactly what Aston Martin needs to start the new era of F1 on the front foot. In addition to the move to Honda power units, now Aston Martin has Newey in the fold — with his admitted love of taking on the challenge of new regulations.

It could make for the ideal pairing.

“I do enjoy regulation changes,” Newey is quoted as saying in The Formula. “Perhaps the part of my job I enjoy the most is figuring out what those regulations mean, what is their intention, and if a subtle difference allows [us to explore] new horizons.”

Throughout his legendary career, Newey has often solved those riddles well, doing so with pencil and paper along with his legendary notebook, rather than the computer-guided design programs that are all the rage these days.

Take the RB5, his design at Red Bull for the 2009 season. That year brought sweeping new regulations aimed at improving overtaking, which included changes to the bodywork, the tires, and the introduction of the “kinetic energy recovery system,” or KERS. That design powered Red Bull to a second-place finish in the Constructors’ Championship, their best result yet in the sport. Only a more creative design, the “double diffuser” used by Brawn GP on their BGP 001, prevented Red Bull from winning their first title.

But they accomplished that the following year with Newey’s RB6, which was essentially the RB5 with a double diffuser of its own. Newey believed that car generated the most downforce in the sport’s history. “The RB6 was probably the car with the most downforce in the history of F1, more even than the legendary spoiler cars of the 1980s,” said Newey years later. “We measured up to 5.5G of lateral acceleration. It could go flat out through Copse at Silverstone.”

Newey spoke of his “trust” in Honda during his discussion with Aston Martin.

“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,” added Newey. “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.”

While Newey’s vision may be coming together for the team’s 2026 challenger, the legendary engineer was reluctant to make any sort of predictions for next year.

“There’s no point in daydreaming about the future. It’s about getting on and doing the work. If we do our work correctly, hopefully things will come together.”