Formula 1 News: Newey fears 2026 regulations will ruin F1 racing

Adrian Newey has warned that the F1 2026 regulations could see a “pretty significant” chance of the field spreading out again after the current closeness.

–by Mark Cipolloni–

I wrote a similar article months ago sounding the alarms bells: F1 News: 2026 engines and cars will destroy parity, double cost

Newey said in a recent interview that the upcoming regulation changes could have a high chance of “blowing the grid apart” after years of convergence.

Newey admitted that the wider fan community does not generally enjoy seeing cycles of one-team domination, as is the case now with Red Bull and Max Verstappen, but added that the trend of one team flying out of the traps after a regulation change often results in a wider field spread – which does not benefit the series as a whole.

“People do lament that the results have been dominated, fortunately in our case by us, but by one team during these rules to date,” he recently told Motorsport.com.

“But that can obviously change. It’s definitely closing up. And who knows what will happen next year? One of our rivals could easily overtake us.

“If you look at history, then whenever there’s a regulation change, more often than not one team reads it better than another. And there’s a period of domination.

“We had that with Mercedes on the PU side, when there was a big PU change in 2014. We’ve had it in other times there have been regulation changes.

“We also had this huge change in 2022, and the grid is probably starting to converge. I’d be amazed if it wasn’t, and I think it’s going to be a much tighter fight for us this year than it was last year.

“And no doubt it will be an even tighter fight for everybody next year. So, just as everything’s starting to converge, and fans are starting to get what they want, we have got an even bigger change – because it’s the first time I can remember we’ve got a new PU and chassis happening at the same time.

“So, the chances of that blowing the grid apart have to be pretty significant.”

Newey is absolutely correct. Which is why, in my opinion, the 2026 regulations should be delayed until 2030. If one team runs away with all the races and the field is spread all over the track minutes apart, F1 will be in real trouble.

And why are the rules being changed? To appease the fake climate change activists who feed off the government money trough.

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