Fifteen thousand car parts, and almost none of them will survive. That’s how Adrian Newey describes Aston Martin‘s 2026 Formula 1 car: not an evolution, but an obliteration of everything that came before it.
“A car that comprises over 15,000 parts and when you’re looking at something like next year’s car where we have a big regulation change to 2026, almost none of those parts will be carry-over,” Newey says in a video interview on Aston Martin’s YouTube channel.
Newey’s comment distils what most 2026 projects represent for F1 teams as they face the new rules era: a rare, total reset.
The new regulations, aimed at producing lighter cars with more electric power, demand a clean sheet of paper.
For Newey, however, his own restart may be the more profound one, as he now faces the challenge of building something new from nothing at a team still trying to figure out how to compete at the front of the field.
“What I particularly enjoy is kind of looking at it holistically and from all aspects,” he adds. “Any Formula 1 team is similar in as much as has an aerodynamics department, a mechanical design department, and then a simulation and race engineering department.
“Trying to make sure that those all work together, that we have a unified product, not only in its detail but also perhaps just even more importantly in its concept.
Newey admits fear of failure is still a factor, even at 66
Grand Prix Photo
“I find that process fascinating and working with my colleagues here with modern support is what we’re here for.”
Newey, who joined Aston this year after his spell at Red Bull, says he spends half of his day with engineers, huddled around CAD stations.
The other half is spent fighting deadlines and managing anxiety, as he admits he still feels fear, not of losing, but of failing.
“Some of the motivation is that fear of failure,” he admits. “I’ve tried to learn to use that constructively because it’s that difference between too much pressure or pressure mismanaged causing mistakes versus leading to quite a focused and tunnel vision-like state.
“My wife, over the last three, four months since I’ve joined the team, complains that I’m in a design trance and I understand what she means, that I don’t kind of see left and right and I’m not terribly sociable.
“What limited processing power I have is all concentrated on the task in hand given these pressing deadlines, but that’s not a state to stay in for too long and that all sounds quite egotistical as well. It’s really ultimately all about the team and how we work together.”
For Newey, 2026 isn’t just another regulation change, but also a return to the simple joy of figuring out how things work together, a clean sheet both for the new car and for himself as a designer working together with a big team on people.
Newey has been working alongside Andy Cowell at Aston
Aston Martin
“We are a team of around 300 engineers,” he says. “Collaboration, of course, is the most important single aspect – in many ways more than individual talents within the organisation. It’s how we all work together, make sure that we communicate and extract the most from each other.”
He spends half his day working side by side with designers, “Either at a one-to-one level gathered around a CAD station or in meetings.” He prefers the former.
“The big meetings, if you’re not careful, become procedural information exchanges without actually coming up with new ideas — which is of course, the important bit.”
Newey concedes that if there’s one frustration, it’s the lack of time.
“We’re under intense pressure for deadlines,” he admits. “To get the major architectural parts of the car – the gearbox, the chassis, the front and rear suspension — released in time for testing in January.
“In truth, I’m spending a bit more time than I’d like about 50 per cent of my time at the drawing board or looking at CFD, the Vehicle Dynamics programmes, and trying to make sure that we’re coming up with a concept that we’re all happy with.”
But he insists on collective ownership: “I never want it to not be with everybody’s involvement and buy-in.”
Newey admits the challenge of building a new car from scratch remains as exciting as it is daunting, given all the elements that need to work together to create a successful machine, one that allows Aston to finally make the jump so that its resources are matched by on-track performance.
Driver feedback continues to be essential for Newey
Aston Martin
“Trying to understand the implications of these rule changes – how the power unit, with its much greater electrical side, affects the chassis design, the vehicle dynamics – it’s a very complicated equation,” he says.
“Even with AI advancing as rapidly as it is, we’re a long way off. It really depends very heavily on human ideas — and that really is, I suppose, the essence of Formula 1: that ability to conceptualise, to react quickly, and to be self-critical.”
He adds: “Perhaps we can chase the wrong direction and have to react very quickly. Recognise if we’re going the wrong way, have the appetite to say, ‘No, hand up, this isn’t working, let’s try a different avenue.’ That requires being very honest with yourself.”
Over four decades Adrian Newey has become F1’s most successful car designer, his longevity ensured by a host of technological innovations – read his story
By
James Elson
While Aston Martin has all the tools required to build a winning car, Newey says he can’t rely only on data and simulation, but on human judgement, both from the men designing and building the car but also from the drivers.
“I’ve been in the business for a long time since I graduated, which was in 1980,” Newey says. “I’ve seen a lot of change in that time, particularly as a result of the computer age and the depth that we can now go into research. Those tools allow us that much greater depth and understanding, but they are exactly that, they’re tools. It still takes the human to come up with the ideas and to then use those tools to the best of effect.
“When I started, there were no onboard data recorders, no telemetry. The input of the driver was absolutely critical because the only clue the race engineer had about how the car was behaving was really from what the driver told him. As we’ve moved into the data age where we have literally thousands of sensors on the car transmitting in real time, of course we can tell a great deal about what the car’s doing.
“Ultimately, the reason it’s doing that very often is down to the driver. It’s down to the driver’s input. Drivers are very often wonderfully intuitive animals. They will adapt their driving to suit the strengths and weaknesses of the car. If you want to try to find out what those weaknesses are, then you have to interrogate the driver and force him to think about it and force him to say, are those weaknesses? The driver still has an absolutely vital role.”
In the end, however, even Newey himself has to admit he doesn’t know what awaits in 2026.
“The honest answer is I have absolutely no idea,” he says. “We are in a period of transformation. We’ve, as a team, grown rapidly. It’s really in a now settling-down phase, having grown hugely in numbers. We now need to settle everybody down, get them working well together.
“I’ve never been a believer in saying we will now achieve this or we’ll now achieve that. I think the satisfaction comes from working together to move forwards. If we can achieve that in 2026, that will be the first tick.”
