Andy Cowell assumed leadership of the team only recently as Team Principal, but behind the scenes, he has been laying the foundation for a leaner and more efficient operation since his first day as CEO at Aston Martin.
The restructuring announced a few days ago marks the first step in building a team that aspires to win in the future. To achieve this, Aston Martin must learn to align all its elements seamlessly. Lawrence Stroll has been assembling a “stellar” team of engineers and infrastructure by securing some of the most prominent names in the field.
However, assembling top talent isn’t enough. The team must find the right chemistry to complete the puzzle. This is precisely what Cowell aims to achieve, with internal restructuring as a clear indication of his direction for the team.
These efforts are inevitably tied to the developmental struggles over the past 18 months. After a strong start to 2023, with numerous podiums, Aston Martin was unable to escape the negative spiral it entered, struggling to advance both the AMR23 and the AMR24.
The issue with upgrades
The 2024 Formula 1 season highlighted specific problems, such as the team pursuing two parallel development paths for the car during the same season. This led to alternating between two different floors depending on track characteristics. In the United States, an attempt was made to introduce a new floor specification that combined the best of both designs, but it didn’t deliver the expected results, though it provided valuable insights.
“The update the team brought to Austin for last year’s United States GP is an example. It didn’t deliver the performance expected. It required deeper investigation to understand why this happened and implement changes so that when we bring our next update with the AMR25, we’ll be in a better position and achieve what we expect.”
Difficulties in making updates work have been a hot topic for Aston Martin. For Cowell, the first goal is to turn this weakness into a strength. In fact, Aston Martin may have introduced more updates than any other team last season, perhaps too many, losing its way in the process without a corresponding improvement in performance.
“The team’s commitment is unquestionable. In 2024, we probably won the title for the most updates brought, but they didn’t translate into performance improvements,” said Cowell.
Being 90% confident in innovations
“This doesn’t mean everything has to work perfectly. Statistics show that in genuine research and development environments, a 20% success rate is high. If we can achieve a 20% success rate, that’s good, but the difference is that this needs to happen at the AMR Technology Campus and not on the track.”
The new Team Principal’s objective is to ensure at least 90% confidence that all updates developed in the factory and brought to the track will function as intended. In recent years, Aston Martin used Mercedes’ wind tunnel, but now the team is completing its new wind tunnel at Silverstone.
Beyond being state-of-the-art, its proximity to other design and manufacturing departments offers a distinct advantage over the past.
“We need to ensure that all our tools and processes at the Technology Campus work well so that every update we bring to the track works and meets expectations with at least 90% certainty. It’s not easy to achieve, but it’s our goal. We have advanced CFD tools and the most sophisticated wind tunnel in this sport, but these are just simulations.
“There will always be a risk that the data won’t match what we find on the circuit, but our simulations can provide solid guidance, and I’m confident we can reach a point where we’re right 90% of the time. This is the level at which championship-winning teams operate, so it must be our baseline objective.”
A new structure to address challenges
From the moment he joined Aston Martin, Cowell has prioritized efficiency, focusing on how to get 900 people to work together most effectively. Among the issues he identified were overlapping roles and responsibilities for key team members, prompting him to implement a new structure.
Cowell has effectively separated on-track activities from factory operations, eliminating role overlap and allowing individuals to focus exclusively on their specific responsibilities. Mike Krack will lead the team at race weekends, delegating all administrative and managerial duties to Andy Cowell, while Enrico Cardile will oversee technical operations in the factory, acting as a de facto technical director.
“Building a championship-winning team is our goal. Everything we do is aimed at making that vision a reality. My job is to determine the right organization to achieve that vision,” Cowell explained in an interview with Aston Martin’s official website, reflecting on his first 100 days with the team.
“Do we have the right structure? Are the right people in the right roles? Do we have the infrastructure? Is everyone aligned and working as a cohesive unit? I set the overall goals for the leadership team and collaborate with them to chart the path to achieving those objectives, ensuring we have the right priorities.”
“Listening is incredibly important. It seems so basic, but for me, it has been crucial to understand who everyone is, their roles, how everything fits together, how the team functions, and where things work well or need improvement.”
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