In the days before the Miami Grand Prix, Aston Martin Fernando Alonso’s pilot sat down with the media, including SB nationAnd he talked about the legendary engineer Adrian Newey and team plans for the 2026 season.
Now, Newey’s vision can be giving life.
Aston Martin published an extensive interview with The Living Legend, who joined the team this spring as his new managing technical partner. In the wide interview, Newey offered his latest thoughts about the incoming technical regulations, which are ready to shake Formula 1 next season.
While at the beginning of the year it seemed that Newey was raising a red flag on incoming regulations, it now seems that it has a vision of how the procession in the new era.
“My thoughts about the regulations of ’26 are similar to what my thoughts were about the great change of regulation by 2022: the initial thinking of the regulations was so prescriptive that it was not much Heef here [for a designer]But then he begins to deepen the details and realizes that there is more flexibility for innovation and different approaches than seen for the first time, ”said Newey when asked about the incoming regulations.
Nowey then predicted that 2026 could look a lot at 2022, when the teams brought dramatically different concepts to the track. The main one, of course, was the infamous concept of “zero-pod” that Mercedes implemented that season.
“We saw that at the beginning of 2022, with teams taking really different addresses. Now, of course, four seasons have converged to a large extent, but start that was not the case. Variation between Lee’s appearance. Apart from the free one,” said Newey.
“I think there is a high probability that in ’26 we will see something similar to ’22. There is enough flexibility in the regulations, and I am sure that people will find different solutions. Some of those equipment equipment equipment equipment.”
Newey also pointed out the fact that they are not only changing the chassis regulations, but also the regulations of the power unit. According to incoming regulations, there will be a 50/50 division between the provid of energy by the internal combustion engine and the battery component.
The engineer believes that this also creates a greater “opportunities” for the equipment, similar to when the hybrid power units were first introduced in 2014.
“The other aspect of this is that, for the first time I can remember, we have the chassis regulations and the regulations of the power unit changing at the same time. This is … interesting … and a little scary. Both the new aerodynamic rules and [power unit] Regulations present opportunities. I would expect to see a range of aerodynamic solutions, and there could be a variation in PU performance through the network to the beginning, which is what happened when hybrid regulations first arrived in 2014. “
Newey joining the team and focusing on the next set of regulations can be exactly what Aston Martin needs to start the new era of F1 on the front foot. In addition to the transfer to Honda Power Units, now Aston has Newey in the Redile, with his love admitted for assuming the challenge of the new regulations.
It could be the ideal pairing.
“I enjoy changes in regulation,” Newy is cited in The formula. “Perhaps the part of my work that I enjoy most is to discover what these regulations mean, what is their intention and if a subtle different [us to explore] New horizons. “
Through its legendary career, Newey has resolved or resolved well those riddles, doing it with pencil and paper along with its legendary notebook, instead of computer -guided design programs that are every day of anger.
Take the RB5, its design in Red Bull for the 2009 season. That year brought new radical regulations aimed at improving overcoming, which included changes in the body, tires and the introduction of the “kinetic energy recovery system” or cherry. That design promoted Red Bull to a second place in the Construction Championship, its best results in sport. Only a more creative design, the “double diffuser” used by Brawn GP in its BGP 001, prevented Red Bull from winning his first title.
But they are achieved the following year with Newey’s RB6, which was essentially the RB5 with its own double diffuser. Nowey believed that the car generated the greatest aerodynamic load in the history of sport. “The RB6 was probably the car with the most drowned in the history of the F1, more than the legendary spoiler cars of the 1980s,” said Newey years later. “We measure up to 5.5 Go lateral acceleration. It could go through Copse in Silverstone.”
Newey talked about his “trust” in deep duration of his discussion with Aston Martin.
“Next year marks the beginning of our Association of Works with Honda. I have a lot of confidence in Honda and a lot of respect for them, having worked with them before,” he thought. “They took a year of F1 and, therefore, to some extent, they are playing up to date, but they are a large group of engineers and a company led by engineering.”
While Newey’s vision can be linked to the team Challenger 2026, the legendary engineer was reluctant to make any kind of predictions for next year.
“It makes no sense to dream awake about the future. It’s about uploading and doing the job. If we do our work correctly, hopefully things come together.”
