More room for innovation than expected in “scary” F1 2026 rules

Aston Martin managing technical partner Adrian Newey says he has been pleasantly surprised by the scope for innovation in F1’s new-for-2026 ruleset.

Newey has come on board at Aston Martin following his Red Bull exit to help establish the ambitious squad as a frontrunner for 2026 and beyond, focusing almost exclusively on the new chassis ruleset that will be introduced at the same time as a heavily revised engine formula.

For 2026 the cars are becoming smaller and lighter as they move away from a heavy reliance on the ground-effect, with active aerodynamics aiming to further reduce drag on the straights while still having reasonable downforce levels in the corners.

According to Newey, the new regulations offer parallels with the last major rule change in 2022, which on the surface appeared to be much more prescriptive than the previous ruleset, only for teams to come up with substantially different design philosophies at the outset.

“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 told the Aston Martin website.

“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.” 

Newey also said introducing sweeping rule changes across both the chassis and power unit at the same time was “slightly scary”, with the big unknown factor being just how much 2025’s tight grid will be blown wide open again.

Alongside aerodynamics and engine performance, the degree to which F1 teams are able to get close to the FIA’s ambitious reduced weight limit has also been identified as a key performance differentiator.

“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.”

But having come from Honda’s current partner Red Bull, Newey backs Aston Martin’s new works manufacturer to hit the ground running with the 2026 power units.

“I’ve got a lot of trust in Honda and a huge amount of respect for them, having worked with them before,” he added. “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.”