Aston Martin’s history with upgrades is rocky to say the least, with the British team often struggling to find form once it starts strapping new parts to its Formula 1 car.
At Imola last weekend, for example, the British side brought a raft of updates to the AMR25 and still left the Italian track without a point, leaving it seventh in the championship.
But Aston Martin is a side undergoing regeneration, having recently moved into an impressive new campus and added star hirings like Adrian Newey. It also has one of the newest wind tunnels on the current grid, which finally burst into life just as the 2025 season started.
This is why Aston Martin’s start to 2025, including it only finishing 11th (Fernando Alonso) and 15th (Lance Stroll) at Imola, adds to the frustration.
“It’s one of those where you can certainly be disappointed about missing out on a point by less than a second,” said Andy Cowell, Aston Martin team principal.
But that doesn’t quite tell the whole story of the squad’s weekend, as it showed real promise until the grand prix. Stroll qualified eighth, his highest of the season so far, while Alonso placed his AMR25 in fifth – his best performance since the 2024 Chinese Grand Prix.
Andy Cowell, Aston Martin Racing
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images via Getty Images
As a result, the pair seemed nailed on for a points-paying finish, yet a combination of a full safety car plus a virtual safety car scuppered Aston Martin’s chances as others received a free stop.
Nevertheless, Cowell still said there are positives the team can take from the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix.
“The positive is we’ve brought an update that’s made the car quicker and, up to the point that a random VSC [virtual safety car] comes out, everything was going OK,” Cowell said.
“So, I think in the moment everybody’s despondent, but I think by tomorrow everybody will be like ‘right come on let’s do more of that, let’s look at all the areas of the car and how do we push more’.”
That feeling was echoed by Alonso after the race, as he said the team “finally” had a “strong car that can score points on merit”.
This marks a stark contrast to this time last year, when Aston Martin started upgrading its AMR24 and performance appeared to go backwards. Now, the team has finally managed to bring new parts that make a real difference on track.
Safety car
Photo by: Luca Bruno / Pool / AFP via Getty Images
“The thing we were struggling with last year was that we were creating updates that might be good at a high-speed circuit but worse at a low speed,” Cowell said.
“What we’ve done is bring an update that is good at low-, medium- and high-speed and so that is a positive step forward.
“Exactly how much quicker is it? I’m not going to declare. I’ll tell you in Abu Dhabi [the season finale].”
And the team clearly has faith in the new parts. It elected to run Friday’s practice session at Imola with one driver using the old spec AMR25 and the other using the upgraded model. This gave Aston data to directly compare the two on the same track and in the same conditions, which Cowell says shows that on “every single corner the package was better”.
What’s more, the launch spec of the AMR25 was signed off in January, while the upgrades left the wind tunnel once the 2025 season got under way in March. This means that these upgrades are the first parts to be developed with the team’s new wind tunnel.
As a result, the data Aston collected at Imola will enable the team to better calibrate its new tunnel, which will help set it on the right path for its next phase of upgrades. This, Cowell says, means that Aston is finally moving in the “right direction” as it works to transform its season and prepare for F1’s new ruleset in 2026.
So, while Aston Martin may be disappointed to not add any extra points to its haul at Imola, the data and learnings it takes away from the race could prove to be even more pivotal to the side’s future.
Additional reporting by Filip Cleeren and Ben Hunt
