Aston Martin ‘won the championship for most updates – but they didn’t deliver’

New Aston Martin team principal Andy Cowell has pinpointed where the team fell short last season.

The team failed to score a single podium finish last year after taking eight in 2023. Although they repeated their fifth place in the constructors’ championship, their points score fell from 280 to 94.

Cowell joined the team last year and became their team principal following an internal reshuffle which was announced a week ago. He said the team must improve its hit rate of successful upgrades this year.

“There is no lack of effort throughout the team,” said Cowell. “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% success rate is high. If we can get a 20% 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.”

Aston Martin has renovated and expanded its factory in recent years. Cowell said the team needs to make the best of the facilities it already has, while others are in development.

“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% certain that it’s going to work on the track and meet our expectations,” he said.

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“It’s not easy to achieve, but it’s what we need to be aiming for. We’ve got very powerful CFD [computational fluid dynamics] tools and the most advanced wind tunnel in the sport coming online. 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% 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.”

All teams are preparing for a significant change in the regulations next year. Aston Martin will also begin a new relationship with Honda, which will become its works power unit supplier. However Cowell says the team must make the most of the opportunity it has to improve its processes this year before the new rules come into force.

“2026 is a huge opportunity for us but it’s not just about ’26, it’s about ’27 and ’28 and ’29 and ’30. It’s about building a team that can achieve sustained success.

“Yes, ’26 is important but it’s just another step on the journey. 2025 is also an important step on our journey and we are focused on improving our performance this year and carrying positive momentum into 2026.

“We mustn’t underestimate the scale of the challenge to bring all these elements together. We’ve got to make the transition from a customer team to a works team at the same time as the new regulations come into play, and we’ve got to design and manufacture our own gearbox along with other components of the car that have previously been supplied to us by Mercedes.”