Aston Martin has admitted it is “not a happy camp” given its disappointing 2025, but is vowing to use this Formula 1 season to prepare for 2026 rather than panicking.
Over 2025’s first five grands prix, Aston Martin is on the wrong side of a tight midfield battle heading into this weekend’s Miami Grand Prix seventh in the championship with 10 points. All of those points were scored by Lance Stroll over the first two race weekends, with two-time F1 champion Fernando Alonso one of only four drivers yet to get off the mark.
Ever since a surprisingly strong start to 2023, a year where Alonso finished fourth in the championship, Aston has been gradually sliding backwards in the development race while going through huge changes behind the scenes at its brand-new Silverstone headquarters.
Team boss Andy Cowell said the Lawrence Stroll-owned squad is “not a happy camp” right now. But rather than going into a tailspin over its current form, Cowell says the underperforming 2025 car can help the team understand all of its new factory tools, just eight months away from the introduction of the all-new 2026 technical regulations.
“The field is exceptionally tight, so the difference from front to back is not so great,” said Cowell in Miami.
“However, you always want to be at the front, so we’re not a happy camp. Are we pleased with the position that we’re in at the moment? No, we weren’t pleased with the position we were in last year.
Andy Cowell, Aston Martin Racing
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
“We are investing heavily in next year and in understanding what we’ve got, so we’re not panicking about this year’s car. We’re using this year’s car as a platform to learn about how to use the new wind tunnel, how to use simulation tools, how to work together to make sure that information flows, and how to focus on lap time.”
Cowell says getting its simulation and wind tunnel data synced up with what the car is doing on the real track is a bigger focus than finding short-term fixes to score points, as it is fully focused on the “mid to long term” rather than 2025.
One way that strategy would manifest itself is by running more experimental set-ups in Friday practice across both cars rather than being laser focused on optimising the weekend itself, something it had already started doing towards the end of last year.
“At the moment we’re using every single race as an opportunity to say: ‘Right, how do we gather more data?'” Cowell explained.
“It’s more about gathering great data rather than picking up points, because we know that if we can get the three worlds to line up then creating cars in the future will be significantly stronger and we are less likely to drop away.”
Additional reporting by Ronald Vording
