Why we are still waiting for the 'Newey effect' - F1 Q&A

Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, Aston Martin, through Fernando Alonso, progressed from the first part of qualifying for the first time this season at the Hungarian Grand Prix

Formula 1 is now on it summer break before the season resumes with the Dutch Grand Prix, from 21-23 August.

The new Aston Martin package has undoubtedly been a success, but they are still well below expectations. Should we have already seen the 'Newey effect', and if so, why has the designer who is repeatedly described as 'the best' not had the expected impact? - Benjamin

There are logical reasons why the Aston Martin-Honda package - so strong on paper - has not yet come together.

In short, the new 2026 aerodynamic regulations were published on 2 January 2025. But Adrian Newey did not start officially at Aston Martin in his new role as managing technical partner until 2 March.

When he arrived, he asked the team to stop what they had already worked on and switch to his design outline. That put them two months behind already.

Then, the wind tunnel was not ready to receive any modelling until mid-April, so now they were nearly four months behind the others.

On top of that, the team only realised in November last year that Honda was a long way behind on its engine design.

The cumulative effect of all this was seen at the start of the year, when it became obvious the car and the engine were both uncompetitive and unreliable.

In the intervening period, Aston Martin, as Newey put it, "overhauled how we work", improved organisation, put in place different systems, and rethought the car.

The result was the car that made its debut in Hungary, which was significantly lighter and had much improved downforce. It cut lap times by about two seconds, it seems.

The first upgrade of the Honda engine comes at the next race, the Dutch Grand Prix after the summer break, which is expected to reduce some - but by no means all, or even the majority - of the gap to the leading engines.

All of that means it will be 2027 before the first full-fat Newey-led design appears. And its competitiveness will also depend on how Honda gets on with its 2027 engine.

With the sudden arrival of Malaysia on the calendar, how do the drivers, especially those who haven't raced there, prepare for the race? - Jacob

The Malaysian Grand Prix was always renowned as one of the toughest on the calendar, because of the demands placed on the body by the tropical conditions.

But the same goes for Singapore, which was already on the calendar and which is just a week after Malaysia on the latest schedule.

So the drivers will not need to do anything different in their preparations than they would already be doing for Singapore - they often say that the training they do all year is focused on being able to cope with the humidity and heat there.

One problem the introduction of Malaysia does pose, however, is time zones.

For Singapore, the drivers and teams essentially stay on European time, because of the night-race schedule. So, getting up around lunchtime, going to bed around 3-5am.

But Malaysia is a daytime race, so they will have to switch to local time for that one, having been in Azerbaijan the previous weekend, and then migrate back towards European time for Singapore.

However, these are world-class athletes who are used to this sort of thing, so they will be fine.

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Published6 days agoIf, as looks likely, the F1 season might finish in Europe (probably Italy), will the low temperatures make the race a bit processional with the low temperatures providing low grip? Is there not a better solution available somewhere warmer, South Africa, Portugal or Thailand for instance? - Alan

The end-of-season races in Qatar and Abu Dhabi are in doubt because of the ongoing war between the US/Israel and Iran.

If the situation does not improve by the time F1 has to make a decision, which F1 president Stefano Domenicali says is mid-September, then the races will have to be cancelled.

At the moment, the most likely solution is a race in Imola in Italy in early December.

The weather in Italy at that time can be cold, of course. But, as Domenicali pointed out on a call with F1 media last week, perhaps not as cold as in Las Vegas at the end of November.

It gets pretty chilly at night in Las Vegas when the grand prix is on, and the track surface there is especially non-abrasive. And of course, as it's a night race, there is no solar radiation to heat up the track surface, which there would be to some degree in Imola.

So if the tyres can cope with Las Vegas, they can cope with Imola.

Why not somewhere warmer? As ever in F1, the sport does not just put on a race for the sake of there being a race, it also has to make financial and logistical sense.

You say Thailand - there is no track there. South Africa? It has Kyalami, but F1 has been trying to stage a race in Africa for some years but it proved impossible for various reasons in South Africa.

Portugal's Portimao is back on the calendar for real in 2027, but construction work needs to be done for it to be ready, and it could not do that and host a race in December.

The same goes for Istanbul Park, where the weather in December may well be no better than Imola.

And there is also all the travel-related documentation to consider.

Domenicali said last week: "Considering the constraint that we have, we need to go back to close all the Brexit-connected documentation from abroad in the UK and then go to another place.

"Therefore, the only possibility is to finish in Europe within the same framework of the time, hoping that there will be no snow, as we can hope in other places."

Image source, Getty ImagesImage caption, During the Covid-affected 2020 season, F1 staged a race at Imola on the weekend of 31 October-1 November

There seem to be more significant upgrades from a number of teams this year, McLaren's being the latest. Will the top four teams be bringing many more in the second half of the season or is there a limit to what they can do? - Richard

All the F1 teams headed into 2026 knowing that the season would be defined by development.

When there is a new rule set, this is always the case. The longer a set of rules exists, the more a) the car designs converge; b) teams get into diminishing returns.

But at the start, progress comes faster and in bigger steps, and that explains the fluctuation in form between the top teams so far this season.

Typically, a team will bring an upgrade, their competitiveness will increase, but then it will shift as other teams bring their own upgrades.

The longer a team leaves it between upgrades, the more they fall back.

That's why McLaren, for example, made a leap forward with their Miami upgrade, but slowly slipped back as Mercedes and Ferrari brought their own big developments in Canada and Spain.

Then, McLaren leapt forwards - even more than they expected - with their Hungary upgrade. And they have another due in Zandvoort. And more to come after that.

Ferrari, Mercedes and Red Bull also have developments to come after the summer break.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said in Hungary: "I still believe that if we want to be in a position to fight for victories consistently in the future, we need to keep our focus on delivering more upgrades. That is the plan, but we are not naive. We know that this will be the plan for all the teams.

"Like it's always been in this 2026 season, it's a matter of a race of upgrades. And the good news is that McLaren is now back in this race of upgrades while fighting for the lead.

"But I expect that the car that will be the best car at the end of the season will keep adding tenths of a second in the next 11 races, probably as much as half a second. So definitely a lot of work ahead of everyone, not only McLaren."

The limiting factor is the cost cap - all teams are restricted to spending no more than $215m on racing and development this season.

This means teams have to be strategic in how they deploy their new parts, "rather than just throwing it in at every grand prix, like in the past", as Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff put it in Hungary.

He added: "We're bringing upgrades, we're closely monitoring how much we can bring. At the moment, cost cap-wise, we're in a good spot. We've tried to have it a little bit more second-half-of-the-season weighted, and we'll see if that's enough."

Why don't McLaren make their own engines? They often seem to struggle because they rely on others' (Mercedes) power units, who are also a direct competitor. Surely McLaren have the expertise and they could benefit their road car industry and their F1 car if they became a works team. - Jack

Making a Formula 1 engine is a highly specialised enterprise. It's also extremely expensive. The manufacturers supplying engines to F1 this year have all spent hundreds of millions of pounds developing their power-units.

Apart from Red Bull, all are car manufacturers who have wider automotive companies to offset the cost, and expertise on which to lean.

There is now an engine budget cap, set at $190m in a company's inaugural year, and $148.5m after that.

McLaren is a road-car manufacturer. But it does not build engines. It outsources its engines to a UK company called Ricardo.

The plans for the next F1 engine, due in either 2030 or 2031, are still being formalised, and there is considerable debate about them.

However, one aspect all stakeholders are agreed upon is for the costs to come down, perhaps even to the point where becoming a supplier of customer engines becomes a viable business proposition, which is not the case at the moment.

McLaren have proved they can win titles as a customer team, but they have also had frustrations with their Mercedes relationship this year. They have discovered how customer teams are on the back foot when it comes to maximising the operations of such complex engines at the start of a new regulation cycle.

As for the future, McLaren Racing chief executive officer Zak Brown said at the Monaco Grand Prix: "Priority one is to stay with Mercedes. They've been a great partner. Any time a new regulation comes out, we'll take a look and see, is it something technically that's interesting? Is it something fiscally that makes sense?

"We'll go through that process when that happens. But sitting here right now, we're extremely happy with Mercedes and we anticipate continuing with them."

Send us your question for F1 correspondent Andrew Benson

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