Having spent nearly three months at Aston Martin's Silverstone base, the design genius has started to get a good picture of what works and what doesn't. The facility is state-of-the-art – and the class leader in the sport, but there are areas that need work.
"It's fair to say that some of our tools are weak," he says. "Particularly the driver-in-the-loop simulator needs a lot of work because it's not correlating at all at the moment, which is a fundamental research tool."
The roots of the Aston Martin team trace back to the little independent operation called Jordan, founded by Eddie Jordan. They've always operated efficiently with a small budget. It's one thing to do that, though, and another to be able to make the most of significantly more resources.
As a result, they are suffering growing pains – and thus Newey accepts it would be unwise to stress the system too quickly and it will take time to gel the project.
"I think Aston has gone from a small team as Jordan, and then the pink team at Force India, and then into Racing Point and so forth, where it's always a small but over-performing team," he says.
"It's grown hugely in a very short space of time into what it is now. And we now really need to settle down and kind of get the organisational structure perhaps a little bit better sorted out, work out how we all work together as effectively as possible and develop the simulation tools, because that's one of the areas which I would say we're quite weak in."
I suggest that is not the work of a moment.
"Unfortunately not, no," he says. "But it's a very enjoyable challenge. I think I'm very lucky to be starting with Andy Cowell, who I've known for very many years, so we can divide up our responsibilities and both get on with our respective jobs."
He adds: "To sort out a plan to get it where it needs to be, that's probably a two-year project in truth.“
https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/arti ... 7N4Gc5qMeR
That’s what he said to the official f1 channel, as everybody can watch the video on the website.
