EXCLUSIVE: Andy Cowell on how to turn Aston Martin into serial F1 winners

As CEO and team principal, Andy Cowell is spearheading Aston Martin’s quest to become a front-running and championship-winning F1 force.

Aston Martin have bold ambitions of becoming F1 world champions in the coming years but currently languish ninth in the constructors’ championship and appear to be stuck in an incredibly competitive midfield pack.

Billionaire owner Lawrence Stroll has committed huge resources to the project, building a new factory and state-of-the-art wind tunnel at the team’s Silverstone base, yet Aston Martin have flattered to deceive in recent years.

After enjoying a flying start to 2023 that saw Aston Martin emerge from the winter as Red Bull’s nearest challengers and regularly finish on the podium, the team have been hamstrung by in-season development and slid down F1’s pecking order.

However, capturing the services of design legend Adrian Newey from Red Bull and securing a works engine deal with Honda are seen as huge coups as Aston Martin look to capitalise on a regulation shake-up coming to F1 in 2026. What’s more, they already have one of the best grand prix drivers of all-time in Fernando Alonso.

Seven months into the role, which has expanded into also serving as team principal, Cowell - the guru behind Mercedes’ all-conquering V6 hybrid power unit - sat down exclusively with Crash.net at the Monaco Grand Prix for an update on the state of play at Aston Martin.

Question: Is it important to prove critics wrong?

“I don’t think it’s so much about responding to critics. Fundamentally we’ve got a certain amount of resource and if you can spend that resource, regardless of whether its within aero cap or the rest of the business, so that every time we introduce something new it does work when we get to the track, then it's such a positive thing for the organisation and also doesn’t waste energy.

“When you put a plan together, if you can plan for success, the transition of one spec to the next can be done with confidence without having to fully double up. So energy within the business is spend more productively. Flip-flopping is both demoralising and hard-nosed resource sapping.”

Was it a morale boost for the team to see a new update working?

“Exactly. The mood in the business last Monday [after the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix] when you can say in front of the workforce ‘we’ve done an update and the car has gone quicker’ and 100 percent of the people that looked at the data on Friday night agreed that this makes the car go quicker, that’s like getting a point. We didn’t get a point, but.”

Has anything changed in approach to in-season development?

“I think it’s a case of being structured, considering what you want to do, achieving that, and then releasing when you are confident that it’s going to work. That is helped by having a new wind tunnel, and that is helped by having a healthy competitive push but without panic.

“I think last year we were rushing so much that our standards were being compromised. The harsh reality of Formula 1 is that when you go and compete, any little bits of scruffiness or vulnerabilities will come out and bite you. I think that’s what happened last year.”

How integral has the new wind tunnel and new infrastructure been?

“The new wind tunnel wasn’t used for the development of the [Imola] update but it was used for the mapping and the confirmation at the end. So that data went into supporting the set-up decisions for Imola. It just helps with the transition of hardware into set-up, into running on the track and having a better plan.”

McLaren have gone from the back to the front of the grid and are now the benchmark in F1. Do you take inspiration from them?

“I think we know that success in Formula 1 isn’t from a silver bullet, it’s from hard work in many, many areas. And in each of those areas you need to understand exactly what makes the car quicker where you spend the resource that you’ve got. I think McLaren have got themselves dialled well into that.

“That’s the sort of approach we want to take. We know there isn’t one silver bullet. We know we’ve got areas where we can improve and it’s just making sure we do make those incremental steps and bring them to the track in a thorough way. Some of which we’ll do this year, where it’s carry over technology and carry over approaches for next year, and some of it will wait.”

How much influence have you felt since Adrian Newey arrived and has there been anything he has changed? 

"I think he provides two things. He provides experience of designing the whole car. There aren’t many people in the industry who have spent as much time as he has of laying out the architecture of whole cars with new regulations, so he’s got that experience. And he’s also exceptionally competitive and obsessive with things. He’s single-minded with it, brings it to a point of ‘no, that’s the quickest, let’s not have a big tolerance on it, let’s just aim at the quickest solution’. So it’s those two things.

How do you get the best out of Adrian Newey?

"Listen and do. I guess with everything in life it’s about listening to wise, experienced people and the small snippets of insight, how do you grab hold of those, get to understand the depths around it and then it’s getting 300 engineers to understand and to follow. What I’m really keen to do is to make sure that we all learn from Adrian, we don’t just follow instruction."

How have you found being more of a figurehead, rather than someone who is behind the scenes?

“The biggest chunk of it is the same as I was doing before. It was how do you lead an engineering company? Which is a group of people to create an amazing machine. Before it was a power unit and now it’s the race car. So that aspect of it is the same, because it’s maths, physics and a little bit of chemistry all coming together.

“You have theories, you do experiments to see whether the theory is founded, and that requires the marriage between precise engineering and rapid, high-quality operations. So that side of it is exactly the same, and it’s those drivers that I believe will pull us forward.

“I guess the bit that is different is the interviews, and the amount of time spent telling the story of what we’re doing. The story is kind of the same, just with this job there’s a requirement to tell the story. I guess the relationship with Fernando and Lance [Stroll] as well, but for them it’s a very clear requirement. It’s to keep them informed of what we’re doing.”

How do you build a team that is not only successful, but also able to sustain it over a number of years?

“I think it’s coming up with organisation efficiency, engineering methods and setting us up where we can develop innovative swiftly, 365-days-a-year and we don’t waste our energy and just get the machine running beautifully. Encourage lots of ideas and bring them to the circuit.

“All successful teams have found a way of doing that but holding onto it is often the challenge. Some people only want to climb Everest once. Winning multiple championships you need to set the environment, the atmosphere, the enthusiasm for climbing Everest every single year."

Is that what you are trying to bring from your time at Mercedes?

“Yeah absolutely. The team has got great strengths. It’s coming up with a way of operating where no department is reliant on an individual, it just works. So if a team goes to a race weekend, the development carries on.”

Are you adopting a ‘no-blame culture’ at Aston Martin?

“I think if you are genuinely innovating and trying pioneering things in the factory then world class hit rate is 20 percent success rate. So four out of five are not going to give you a yes.

“But it’s making sure those four out of five times you learn from it, so every conclusion provides some positive learning and encourages people to have a go, and encourages people to be ambitious and knock the hurdles over and achieve their initial dream.”

How do you create a winning mindset in a team that is not used to winning?

“I think it’s just saying ‘that’s the mission and that’s where we want to get to’ and encouraging every department to have that as their objective. Don’t think about step one and then two, let’s go straight to step two. Whenever you hear the phrase ‘that’s good enough’, it’s like 'are you sure?’.

"The ambition for perfection but understanding that it’s aspirational rather than anything you actually achieve - encouraging that across the whole business.

“Whether it's the comms department; Luke [Skipper, Aston Martin’s chief communications officer] after every race sends me an email saying what I can do better from a comms perspective. It’s everything we do, how can we get better?”

And how does that challenge compare to your time at Mercedes?

“Mercedes road cars had the viewpoint of ‘the best or nothing’ and I enjoy that. I don’t enjoy at all coming to a race and finishing off the podium. I enjoy it so much more if we can do that.

“However as Niki Lauda used to say, celebrate for a moment but then get on and sort all the issues you’ve got. It’s that sort of obsessive, relentless push for getting better.”

How confident are you that Aston Martin can achieve these ambitions?

“I think Lawrence has got an amazing vision and we’re all trying to deliver that. We will continually look for areas where every single department, every part of the car will improve and we’ll try and make the improvements quicker than our opponents.

“If you do develop quicker than your opponent, you will catch them. If you do it for long enough you’ll overtake them and when you get to the front you work even harder. And it is really harder when you get to the front because then you really are a pioneer in all areas.

“But I think everyone is up for it and everyone has the enthusiasm to do that. We don’t know whether we will achieve it, or when we do, because we don’t know what our opponents are doing.  All we can do is focus on our bit.”