Apr.28 (GMM) Rob Marshall says System 1’s much-criticised 2026 laws are permitting much more design freedom than engineers initially anticipated.
“We anticipated the laws to be fairly strict,” stated the McLaren chief designer.
“Prior to now, massive quantities of numbers and information have been written on paper, which to some extent decided the framework that needed to be adopted.
“Now, there are tons of extraordinarily advanced CAD fashions, and at first look it appears far tougher to train creativity based mostly on them, as a result of the mannequin designs the machine for you.”
Nonetheless, Marshall stated the fact throughout the grid has been very totally different.
“Once I regarded on the different groups’ automobiles, they have been using fairly totally different options, and there have been some that have been significantly fascinating.”
He pointed to a number of standout ideas.
“Audi’s sidepods are fairly fascinating. They’ve adopted a distinct answer, and there’s nothing else fairly prefer it. We thought they might simply repurpose one thing commonplace, however clearly that wasn’t the case.”
“The suspension geometry on the Aston Martin could be very fascinating. The rear is sort of formidable and really fascinating. There’s definitely some cause to be fascinated by it. The entrance suspension can be very fascinating, and it might have been impressed by one thing we labored on final yr.”
Marshall additionally highlighted Ferrari’s method.
“The rear wing – everybody noticed it and thought, ‘Oh, I see, no drawback’,” he stated, referring to the so-called ‘Macarena’ answer that has reportedly now additionally been examined by Pink Bull. “So I requested if it was actually authorized, they usually stated, ‘No drawback.’”
“The exhaust vents additionally characteristic some ingenious design parts, and everybody thought, ‘That is fairly fascinating.’”
“The entrance wings are additionally very distinctive, however you possibly can see a wide range of shapes relying on the staff. Everybody thought the entrance wings would all look the identical, however that’s not truly the case.”
