As Aston Martin plots its ambitious rise to the front of the Formula 1 grid in time for the sweeping regulation overhaul of 2026, a notable difference in perspective has emerged between two of its top leaders.
Managing Technical Partner Adrian Newey and CEO Andy Cowell appear to be at odds over the severity and timeline for fixing the team's troubled Driver-in-the-Loop (DIL) simulator — a tool Newey has labelled as a “handicap” and Cowell insists is merely part of a routine development curve.
Their contrasting views highlight the challenges facing Aston Martin as it aims to challenge for wins and championships in the future.
Adrian Newey, in his first public appearance with the team at the Monaco Grand Prix, didn’t hold back in his assessment of one of Aston Martin’s most critical development tools.
Although he praised the team's new factory setup as “the best” in Formula 1, his comments to website The Race painted a stark picture of where the DIL simulator stands today.
“I think it is fair to say that some of our tools are weak, particularly the driver in the loop simulator,” Newey admitted. “It needs a lot of work because it’s not correlating at all at the moment, which is a fundamental research tool. Not having that is a limitation.”
Newey, renowned for his design brilliance, underlined how the simulator’s flaws could hinder both car development and race preparation.
“It is a handicap, but difficult to say how much. Driver in the loop simulators are used in two ways,” he added. “One as a research tool... the other of course is how you develop the set-up of the car, typically, especially for given race weekends.
“So we’re going to be a bit blind on that for some time. We have just got to try to use experience and best judgement. How successful that will be, time will tell.”
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Critically, Newey estimated that a complete fix to the simulator's correlation issues could up to 24 months, or perhaps even more. take years.
“But that’s probably a two-year project in truth.”
In contrast, Cowell, speaking to Sky F1, sought to temper Newey’s concerns, framing the simulator’s issues as routine.
“Whenever you create new equipment it takes a while to commission it and then work out how well correlated either the [driver-in-the-loop simulator] or the wind tunnel is with the real world here,” he said.
“So you need to do some updates, you need to bring it to the track, you need to see how everything matches up. That’s correlation and even experienced teams have problems with correlation. You hear it up and down the pit lane.”
Cowell praised Newey’s high standards, noting: “The great thing with Adrian is he’s coming in and saying what is great, he’s setting the level that is really good and so we’ve got to lift up to that. And it’s work that we were already working on, but Adrian just helps refine the jobs list.”
The Aston team principal dismissed Newey’s concerning two-year timeline.
“Adrian spent the last two months with us just focusing on the architecture for the ’26 car. And I can’t think of anybody better in the industry for reading a set of rules, looking at the high level and positioning all the key parts in the right location,” he said.
“So we’re very fortunate with that. We also know that we need to have all the simulation tools to help refine that and help set that overall goal. But it will be ongoing work.
“I don’t think we’ll ever say that our toolset is perfect. There’ll always be areas that we need to work on. So Adrian said it’ll take a couple of years, I think it’s just going to be ongoing work for us, constantly chasing and improving every single toolset that we’ve got.”
The differing timelines – Newey’s two-year estimate versus Cowell’s view of continuous improvement – are perhaps par for the course in Aston Martin’s quest to become a title contender.
But Newey’s experience-driven approach demands a fully functional simulator to optimize car design and race setups, while Cowell’s optimism reflects confidence in iterative progress.
For a team heavily backed by Lawrence Stroll’s investments and under increasing pressure to deliver results, resolving the simulator saga could be the first real test of its new leadership dynamic.
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