Cowell focused on improving Aston Martin’s development hit-rate

Aston Martin CEO Andy Cowell says one of his main areas of focus has to been to try and improve the team’s success rate when it comes to updating its car.

Last year Aston Martin continued a trend from 2023 when it started the season with a more competitive car than it finished. The team struggled to bring performance through upgrades, and Cowell – who has also taken over the role of team principal from Mike Krack – says the final parts brought to the track fail to match up with simulation too often.

“There is no lack of effort throughout the team,” Cowell said. “We definitely won the world championship for the most updates in 2024, but those updates didn’t deliver the lap time – and what everybody wants in this business is to deliver lap time.

“That’s not to say we must get it right every time. I’ve seen statistics that show that in true research and development environments, a 20 percent success rate is high. If we can get a 20 percent success rate then that’s good, but the difference is that this needs to happen at the AMR Technology Campus and not at the track.

“We need to make sure that all our tools and processes at the Technology Campus are working well enough to ensure that whenever we take an update to the circuit, we are at least 90 per cent certain that it’s going to work on the track and meet our expectations.

“It’s not easy to achieve, but it’s what we need to be aiming for. We’ve got very powerful CFD tools and the most advanced wind tunnel in the sport coming online but they are only simulations; there will always be the risk of data not quite matching up with what we find on the circuit, but our simulations can give us a robust steer and I’m confident we can get to the point where we’re right 90 per cent of the time.

“That’s the level that world championship-winning teams are operating at so that needs to be our aim at a minimum.”

As well as taking on the team principal position, Cowell has overseen the departures of Dan Fallows and Tom McCullough from the F1 setup, while Adrian Newey is set to join in the coming months. The former Mercedes power unit leader admits it’s a major challenge for him to try and get the correct structure in place between the various technical leaders.

“It’s very much a case of trying to understand people, what their strengths are, how they can contribute to the overall objective, and then you’ve got to stitch the organization together.

“Everyone should be playing to their strengths, so it’s about working out what they are, how they fit in and how they can contribute to the car. It’s up to me to make sure we’ve got the strength and balance in the team to deliver the best reward in terms of lap time.”