Adrian Newey reveals 'scary' opportunity in major F1 rule change

Adrian Newey believes the 2026 F1 technical reset offers an "interesting and slightly scary" opportunity for his new Aston Martin squad.

Former Red Bull chief technical officer Newey took up his position as Aston Martin's managing technical partner earlier this year with an eye to help transform the Silverstone squad in a championship-winning operation. 

Aston's best chance to do this is through the comprehensive changes to the 2026 technical regulations, across both the chassis and power units.

The new rules for the chassis will see the weight drop to 724kg, with active aerodynamics featured whilst the power units are overhauled, boosting their electrical energy.

Evaluting the potential chances the huge package represents for a midfield team to climb into title-contention, Newey felt the opportunity presented was "slightly scary."

"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],” Newey explained to the Aston Martin website. 

 “But you start to drill into the detail and realise there's more flexibility for innovation and different approaches than first meets the eye.

"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.

"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 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."