Aston Martin team principal Andy Cowell hinted he is prepared to accept the “harsh reality” of no more points in the F1 2025 season if it means greater improvement in 2026.

The Silverstone squad have just 14 points after six races this year, and with a desire to focus on the regulation changes next year, they are facing the prospect of ending 2025 on that tally.

Aston Martin chief paints grim picture on 2025 chances

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

A great start in 2023 has become a miserable run of form for Aston with the team falling away from the podium spots to now being seventh in the Constructors’ Championship.

Behind the scenes, great work has been done to improve the team’s HQ and bring staff such as Adrian Newey and Enrico Cardile on board, but all of that is with the goal of hitting the ground running in 2026 when F1 undergoes a complete overhaul, with 2025 feeling like a forgotten prospect.

Faced with the question of not scoring any more points this season, Cowell described it as the “harsh reality” they have to come to terms with if they are to achieve their long-term goals.

“That’s not a pretty picture you’ve described but it’s the harsh reality,” he told media including PlanetF1.com in Imola.

“We are Aston Martin, as a team with all our partners, we’re not here for just this season. We’re here to do well over many seasons.

“The 2026 regulations, that change, and the aero resource restrictions that we’ve got with CFD and wind tunnel time mean that we need to make some really awkward decisions.

“The thing that we’re all absolutely united on, though, is that transforming our business into an efficient development machine is priority number one, and that’s important for both ’25, if we choose to spend resources in ’25, and ’26, ’27, ’28, ’29, ’30 and onwards.”

Despite the focus on ’26, Aston are bringing upgrades to this weekend’s race in Imola but Cowell described how the parts had come together in two different wind tunnels.

“So this is floor and top bodywork package that was work continuing on in the back end of December through until the first race in Melbourne,” he said.

“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.

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“I think the thing 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 curbs and bumps and undulations and movement of the car, that’s what we will learn tomorrow.

“It’s trying to be more thorough. Will it all stitch together? I doubt any team has 100% correlation.”

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