The genius of Adrian Newey can never be disputed. Throughout his long career, he’s built championship-winning cars across multiple different eras with Williams, McLaren and Red Bull.
Now that he’s with Aston Martin, after deciding to walk away from Red Bull in 2024 following the creation of the RB19, the most dominant car in Formula 1 history in 2023, he has moved to the Gaydon headquarters ahead of the new 2026 regulations.
The key regulation updates will introduce new power units, super-efficient active aerodynamics, and the use of 100 percent sustainable fuels. These changes could also shake up the pecking order, with Aston Martin touted as a potential threat following Newey’s acquisition.
Adrian Newey provides a mind-blowing figure of changes to F1 2026 car 
IMAGO / NurPhoto
As the 2026 season approaches, it’s unclear which teams will get the regulations right and deliver the quickest car.
Currently, Aston Martin is a midfield car at best, sitting seventh in the Constructors’ standings and likely to end the season without a feature on the podium.
However, the team’s achievements in this regulatory era include eight podiums from Fernando Alonso in 2023, a fourth-place finish in the Drivers’ Championship, and back-to-back fifth-place finishes in the Constructors’ standings in 2023 and 2024.
Despite this successful stint so early in its Formula 1 journey, the 2026 regulations shake-up will bring massive changes not only to how the car looks but also to how it is engineered, a dramatic impact highlighted by Newey.
“Formula One cars have become very complicated beasts as a result of the computer age allowing much greater in-depth research,” Newey shared in an interview with Aston Martin.
“The result is a car that comprises almost 15,000 parts, and when you’re looking at something like next year’s car, where we have a big regulation change for 2026, almost none of those parts will be carry-over. It’s a mammoth design and engineering exercise.
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”What I enjoy is looking at it holistically. Any Formula One team is similar in that it has an aerodynamic department, a mechanical design department, and a simulation and race engineering department.
“Trying to make sure all those work together, that we have a unified product, not only in its detail but, more importantly, in its concept is a process I find fascinating.”
Based on history repeating itself, Newey and Aston Martin will be a team to watch closely in 2026. With the same driving pairing of Alonso and Lance Stroll, the team may just reach even greater heights.
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