Aston Martin won “championship for most updates” but must focus on making them work

New Aston Martin team principal Andy Cowell reckons that although the Silverstone outfit “won the world championship for most updates” in 2024, it must work on its internal processes to ensure that new parts deliver the expected performance.

Aston Martin started the season in reasonable shape and scored points in the opening seven grands prix, but a comprehensive series of updates at the Imola race – which included an entirely new floor, front wing, rear suspension geometry and sidepod – made the car more difficult to drive.

This led to a largely barren run between Monaco and Spain, saved only by a 6-7 result at Montreal, as Aston’s previously locked-in status amid the top 10 was now being challenged on a regular basis.

The volume of the team’s updates throughout the season did not correlate with efficacy, with it being remarked upon several times that the new parts were not adding much in the way of performance.

Cowell says that the team must rethink its approach, and ensure that further validation work happens at the factory so that the team can be more confident in its updates before a race weekend.

“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 laptime – and what everybody wants in this business is to deliver laptime.

“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 per cent success rate is high. 

“If we can get a 20 per cent 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.”

Lance Stroll, Aston Martin AMR24

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images

Cowell, who joined the team as CEO before replacing Mike Krack as team principal as the Luxembourger takes a new role at the team, says that “building a world championship-winning team is our North Star”, although alluded to the idea that the team didn’t yet know how to reach that target.

F1 has been littered with aspirational targets to win; for example, Renault/Alpine confounded its own “five-year plan” and subsequent “100-race plan” under old management by failing to navigate either.

By contrast, Cowell believes that setting his team the target of winning titles will “stretch” the squad and give its employees something to buy into over the next few seasons.

“It’s okay to set a target that you don’t know how to achieve when you first set out on the journey – a target that people think is impossible both in terms of time and performance. It’s then a case of breaking things down,” Cowell explained.

“Everyone wants the fastest car, but the only way you’re going to get it is if you set targets that are really going to stretch you, that are wildly ambitious. 

“That’s what we’re here to do – there’s no point designing and building an F1 car that isn’t the fastest.

“Formula 1  is all about competitive ingenuity. People in this sport are pioneers. You have to be if you want to fulfil the ambition of becoming a world champion and that is our ambition.”