Aston Martin's Andy Cowell on the challenge of designing an F1 car to brand-new regulations

Gary Anderson credits Charles Leclerc and Ferrari for starting Austin’s sprint on soft tyres. The choice gave Leclerc an immediate launch advantage, moving him into second, and allowed him to hold that position for much of the race. Because the soft stint lasted longer than expected, Leclerc was also likely to undercut his way back past rivals, forcing Lando Norris to complete the overtaking job twice. Anderson argues this is a useful counterexample to the idea that good racing requires tyres to suddenly collapse: a durable tyre can create strategic variety by helping a driver gain track position and retain an undercut option.

The hosts say Red Bull’s revival has transformed the championship fight. Anderson believes the car has performed reasonably well across several different circuit types, beginning with the lessons learned around Zandvoort, and Verstappen is now a genuine threat with five races remaining. Verstappen needs to outscore Oscar Piastri by at least eight points over those races and Lando Norris by at least three. Anderson says those targets are achievable partly because McLaren has made pit-stop errors and other small mistakes. He argues McLaren must tidy up both its team operation and its drivers’ execution before the title slips away.

Anderson rejects the idea that Red Bull’s recovery required a technical revolution. He says the team initially reacted to losing by looking for something McLaren was doing wrong, but later began examining its own weaknesses, helped by a management change and a structure more focused on engineering analysis. The floor is powerful, so modest floor changes can have major effects; the front-wing changes were smaller but still important to the airflow structure through the car. Once the car became more responsive to Verstappen, Anderson says the driver could extract several tenths from a small performance gain, even though the Austin car was not perfect.

The teams’ tape placed on the pit wall helps drivers judge where to stop because modern drivers cannot easily see their front wheels from the cockpit. Anderson says extending the yellow line helped, but tape is a questionable long-term solution because it could interfere with sponsor positions and produce a confusing collection of differently coloured markers. He condemns a Red Bull mechanic removing another team’s tape as unsporting, comparing it with pouring water in front of a rival’s rear tyres. His preferred fix uses the existing jump-start sensor to trigger a dashboard light when the car is within a defined forward-and-back tolerance of its pit box.

Anderson contrasts today’s teams, typically employing around 1,000 to 1,200 people, with the 27-person operation he worked for in 1991. Modern teams use dedicated test benches for gearboxes, brakes and suspension, extensive simulation and calculations accurate to fractions of a percent, whereas his earlier team first established the car’s actual weight and distribution on scales. The challenge is coordinating all those specialists under a cost cap and directing them toward one goal. He says Cadillac faces a particularly difficult clean-sheet project, although its situation differs from his own early experience because the technical detail and organizational scale are vastly greater.

Anderson says a competent team should not put a completely disastrous new concept into the wind tunnel; the real uncertainty is the car’s characteristics and its development potential. Teams use previous seasons to estimate how much improvement—perhaps 2% or 3% over six months—they can extract, then design the baseline so it can accept that development. They must identify which areas respond best, such as the front wing, floor or diffuser, and concentrate resources there. A local maximum can be deceptive: Renault’s 2011 forward-facing exhaust initially worked well but offered little further development, so the expected performance gradient never materialized.

Aston Martin CEO and team principal Andy Cowell says major 2026 work was already underway when he joined in October 2024, including a new transmission, hydraulic system, materials, chassis construction and the Honda power-unit relationship. The regulations require a lighter car and allow more freedom once it passes the safety tests. Aston Martin’s aerodynamic work began after the rules were finalized at the end of 2024 and coincided with its new wind tunnel becoming operational in March. Cowell says the central management task is bringing these systems together, using CFD, wind-tunnel results and Adrian Newey’s architectural experience while measuring progress in milliseconds of lap time.

Cowell explains that Aston Martin sets numerical targets and dates for wind-tunnel runs, transmission tests and structural tests, then reacts when a project is late or below its performance target. Under the cost cap, adding resources to one problem removes them from another, so experienced leaders must identify where effort is most likely to produce a worthwhile reward. He describes Aston Martin as evolving from a young customer team into a works operation while commissioning a wind tunnel, developing Honda collaboration and working with Aramco on fuel and Valvoline on engine oil, greases and transmission lubricant. Despite the complexity, he says the organization relishes the opportunity.

Asked how Cowell’s engine background might influence Honda, Anderson recommends a “download period” rather than arriving with a list of everything Honda is doing wrong. The adviser should explain what he would do, what he examined and what he was trying to achieve, allowing Honda’s engineers to identify useful omissions themselves. Anderson recalls being given Alfa Romeo’s drawings in the mid-1980s and spotting titanium front rockers flexing under 10,000-pound-per-inch springs; replacement rockers helped the cars qualify fifth and sixth at the next race instead of 24th and 25th. He believes Cowell’s communication skills may be as valuable as his technical knowledge.

Anderson says power units do lose performance between races, but the larger concerns are small performance reductions and reliability risk. Teams assign fresh engines to demanding circuits such as Monza, then use older units where the engine workload is lower. Their records account for time at particular RPMs, temperatures and operating conditions, producing a percentage estimate of each engine’s remaining availability. Circuit characteristics also matter; Bahrain’s sand can impose additional stress. Near the end of a season, a team may accept a grid penalty for a fresh unit rather than run a compromised engine, and the same cost-cap pressures lead teams to repair and reuse damaged car components.

Anderson says rain rarely turns an F1 cockpit into a bathtub. Older cars had a drainage hole, partly to remove water and partly because drivers sometimes needed to urinate, but modern teams may avoid such holes because even a tiny aerodynamic penalty matters. Drivers dry their feet, cover cooling ducts in heavy rain when necessary and use grid gazebos, while water entering during racing is limited by the car’s airflow. On fuel, Anderson expects Aramco to supply Aston Martin’s fuel for Honda power units and believes 2026’s fully sustainable-fuel rules create a fresh competitive opportunity. He worries F1 could end up discussing fuel chemistry more than drivers extracting performance.