Newey "fired up the drawing boards,' claims Cowell
Having joined Aston Martin in March, Red Bull's former star desginer Adrian Newey has "fired up the drawing boards", claims the Silverstone-based outfit's CEO and team boss Andy Cowell.
For the 2025 F1 season, Aston Martin retained Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll as their drivers for the third consecutive year. Following a tough season last year, the team elected to replace Mike Krack with Andy Cowell, who now fulfils the role of team principal alongside his responsibilities as CEO.
After Aston Martin secured the services of former Red Bull star designer Adrian Newey as technical partner, the British engineer has started working on the team's 2026 all-new F1 machine at the beginning of April.
The Silverstone-based outfit has endured a tough start to its season so far in 2025, having struggled for pace on all kinds of circuits. However, recent upgrades helped Fernando Alonso record point-scoring finishes in the last four rounds.
Pursuing ambitious goals for the near future, Aston Martin also built a brand-new wind tunnel which was completed in January 2025, and it became operational two months later.
Asked about the new facilities and the way they help Aston Martin develop its brand-new F1 car for the 2026 season, team boss Andy Cowell conceded that the close proximity of the different technical departments help the outfit work more effectively.
"The new facilities just help us have everything at our fingertips. Having the aerodynamicists a short stroll away from the model build area and the wind tunnel section just helps speed everything up.
"Having Adrian join us since March, firing up the drawing board, and the machine that is required downstream of that, has just added some extra impetus to what we're doing for '26. At the start of this week, we had both Fernando and Lance in the wind tunnel section with the model and Adrian.
Commenting on Newey's working methods, Cowell noted: "Adrian was talking about the features on the model. Adrian, as I'm sure Christian remembers, he pushes the boundaries.
"He packages ten things into the space where only one would normally fit, and all the engineers see that as a challenge. It's not just the engineers. It's the whole group of people within the aerodynamics development area.
"The pace with which we're creating changes on the '26 wind tunnel model is quicker than we've ever done before. It really is very impressive. It is like watching 100 people all run 100 metres sub-ten seconds, with perfect baton passes.
"It's very exciting to see and all of that is enabled by having the facilities, and the people and the methods. So yeah, it's an exciting journey into '26," concluded Cowell.
