Cowell admits that Imola is an important test of the team’s new tunnel [Pic: @tinnekephotography]
Following a frustrating start to the 2025 season Imola is an important weekend for the Aston Martin Formula 1 team as it introduces a major update package, which was trialled by Lance Stroll on Friday.
However it’s not just about finding a few tenths and potentially moving up the grid, but also the much bigger picture that connects to the 2026 car that Adrian Newey is currently scheming out back at the Silverstone base.
A couple of months ago the team switched from the Mercedes wind tunnel to its own brand new facility, which is still being fine-tuned while the 2026 project builds up momentum.
Part of that correlation process involves comparing the tunnel results to what happens on track to ensure that next year’s car continues to head in the right direction.
This weekend’s update package was born like the AMR25 in the Mercedes tunnel in Brackley, but crucially it was finalised in the new facility.
As such it represents the first opportunity to pursue that crucial tunnel to track comparison, and the initial feedback on Friday appeared to be positive.
“This is a floor and top bodywork package that was work continuing on in the back end of December through until the first race in Melbourne,” says team boss Andy Cowell.
“So a lot of the development work was done in the previous wind tunnel – not the full aero team, because from January, part of the full aero team was working on ‘26. The final bits of mapping work were done in our new tunnel. And anything that we decide to do beyond this weekend is clearly done in our new tunnel.
“I think the thing where we’re trying to do is make sure that what we measure in the factory, that final mapping work in the new tunnel, is as thorough as we can make it.
“And the way we test here at the circuit, that third world of aerodynamics, that full size car with its different stiffness characteristics compared with a wind tunnel model, and running on a track with kerbs and bumps and undulations and movement of the car, that’s what we will learn.
“So it’s trying to be more thorough. Will it all stitch together? I doubt any team has 100% correlation.”
After a stellar 2023 season Aston Martin struggled last year with updates not always doing what they were supposed to do, and it was perhaps inevitable that this year’s car did not generate a leap forward.
That’s led to a lot of soul-searching about processes and so on which has in turn overlapped with Newey’s arrival plus the move to the new tunnel and everything that entails.
“For anybody doing any job, it’s the approach that you take, and it’s the tools that you use,” says Cowell.
“And it’s both that need to be best in class in order to succeed, regardless of the industry. So we are fortunate that we’re now getting better tools to use, and we are reflecting and trying to dig into the detail of why things didn’t work last year, some of which is direction, some of which is approach.
“And it all comes down to the precision, the confidence that you’ve got in the number that you’re reading. We all live in this digital world where numbers are presented to three decimal places, and we believe it, but what’s the error band?
“So we’re trying to look in greater detail at what is the error band in everything that we measure.
“How do you do an experiment where you hope to have greater confidence to get a clear answer? And when you do an experiment, I don’t care too much whether it’s a positive or a negative.
“I hate the I hate the grey middle ground, because that’s where you’ve not thought about the journey that you’re taking.
“So we’re trying to make sure that every experiment we do, we get greater success of having a clear answer.”
Switching the development of a car from one tunnel to another is not a straightforward exercise.
“I guess it’s like a person with two watches, you don’t know what time it is,” says Cowell. “And that’s where we’ve tried to do the best job to confirm. Maybe this update could have come a little bit sooner, but then it wouldn’t have been in our new tunnel at all.
“We were keen to make sure that the final mapping exercise was done in our tunnel, so that what we’ve got here is a good set of data. Time will tell whether it’s good enough, when nothing’s ever perfect.
“So I’m sure it will improve. But a good set of data from the wind tunnel with the characteristics of this aero package, and then by the end of Friday, we’ll have a track derived set of data.
“Will it perfectly align? I doubt any team ever gets it to be perfectly aligned, but you end up with offsets that you’re comfortable with.”
As Cowell stresses it’s not just about the tools, but people and processes as well, and honing the team around Newey and other recent arrivals.
“What I’m really keen for us to achieve,” he says, “And everybody else is keen to achieve, is we’ve got some really talented people, so how do we get all of us to work well together, so that we have ideas and we swiftly introduce full size parts to the track and we’ve got confidence that they work?
“So creating a racing team that can do that, having innovative ideas and quickly getting them to the race track.
“So our time to the circuit is as tight as possible, but we’re not rushing, and therefore missing the target. That for me, is the number one priority, because that’s what’s important for our future. However, the journey over the last six races hasn’t been enjoyable.
“Coming racing and not getting points is not enjoyable. So there’s a desire to make the AMR25 a more competitive car, but there’s probably a greater desire to make sure that our innovation machine is more robust, and then we can squeeze the timeframe.”
Things might look bleak at the moment in terms of on-track results, but it’s all about the future – and the potential of Adrian Newey armed with F1’s newest, state-of-the-art wind tunnel.
Adam Cooper F1 