Aston Martin won the “championship for most updates” during the 2024 season. However, despite their “win”, many would agree they did not have a championship winning car. The Silverstone based team’s new team principal, Andy Cowell says the team must work on its internal processes to ensure the updates they bring deliver.
Lackluster season
After coming off a competitive 2023 season with one of their driver Fernando Alonso placing fourth in the Driver’s Championship. Their 2024 season would be considered disappointing.
Despite scoring points in the opening seven races, we did not see Aston Martin on the podium at all this year. Unlike Alonso’s constant appearance in the earlier season. The upgrades the team brought to Imola made the car almost undrivable. The upgrades include: a new floor,front wing, rear suspension geometry and sidepod.
This meant that the team left many races empty handed from Monaco to Monza, with the exception of their best result of the year in Stroll’s home race- Montreal where they had a 6-7 finish.
The high volume of upgrades the team brought should have equalled to an improved car and hence more points scored. Yet, it seemed as if the opposite happened instead.
Cowell’s new mission
Cowell says that while the team is not lacking in their efforts, the team does however need to reevaluate how they decide and plan their upgrades. There needs to be more confidences in the upgrades they bring to the 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 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 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.”
Motivating the team
Despite it sounding unrealistic to most, the ex CEO now turned team principle, Cowell believes that setting the target of winning the championship is the way to go. He believes that this will give employees something to work towards 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.”
