Aston Martin team principal Andy Cowell says the team’s focus is on long-term success, not just the excitement surrounding the 2026 season and the new partnership with Honda.
“Joining the team, I was keen to learn about the team overall and then dig down into the world of aerodynamics as an area that I knew of, but not any great detail as to what an aerodynamicist does,” Cowell explained to RacingNews365.
2026: the Aston Martin era?
Cowell acknowledged that change is not easy but stressed it is necessary for growth: “Change is not trivial. We're going racing, we're engineering a car for next year, adding change on top of that is extra workload. Making change requires extra effort. There are always hurdles. There's always a feeling of, ‘do we really need to?’ and it’s just leaning into that.
“It’s not just about 2026. It’s the first season of us being a works team. But there are many more championships after that point, and we want to be strong across all of those.” said highlighting the importance of being ready for the 2026 to start a new era marked by Aston Martin.
'99% of Aston Martin is working on 2026'
Also during the media press conference in Great Britain he said to GPBLog and others: "99% (we're doing) is on 2026. I've got an open mind to the fact that what we learn here this weekend might mean that we drop the ‘25 car back in the wind tunnel just to close the loop. So, we're not saying absolutely no ‘25 model running, because now we've got our own tunnel we can test seven days a week, any hour of those seven days, and it's easy just to slot the model back in and learn a little bit more, so long as it helps us with the learning of creating a Formula 1 car, aerodynamics in CFD, aerodynamics in the wind tunnel, and aerodynamics on the track, and joining those three worlds together. So it will be for the learning in readiness for '26 and '27."
Much of that future strength, Cowell added, comes from Lawrence Stroll’s commitment to investment: “You don't invest in a wind tunnel if it's short-term. You don't invest in the campus that we've experienced if you’re there for the short term. Lawrence gives a very clear vision. We're all impatient, but the investment supports a medium to long-term approach.”
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