Andy Cowell stresses that the new facility is helping Aston Martin hugely in getting things in place for not just 2026 but beyond it, as he adds on line-up plus Honda integration.
In the last few years, Aston Martin has upgraded its Silverstone facility significantly after buying land near its old facility. The idea has been to bring the departments together under one roof, while also upgrade its windtunnel, thereby moving away from Cologne facility.
The new facility is functional now, whose benefits will come through from 2026 onward. That along with Adrian Newey’s influence is coming good now. “The new facilities just help us have everything at our fingertips,” said team boss Cowell. “Having the aerodynamicists a short stroll away from the model build area and the wind tunnel section just helps speed everything up.
“Having Adrian join us since March, firing up the drawing board, and the machine that is required downstream of that, has just added some extra impetus to what we’re doing for ’26. In the last few weeks, we had both Fernando and Lance in the wind tunnel section with the model and Adrian. Adrian was talking about the features on the model.
“Adrian, he pushes the boundaries. He packages ten things into the space where only one would normally fit, and all the engineers see that as a challenge. It’s not just the engineers. It’s the whole group of people within the aerodynamics development area. The pace with which we’re creating changes on the ’26 wind tunnel model is quicker than we’ve ever done before.
“It really is very impressive. It is like watching 100 people all run 100 metres sub-ten seconds, with perfect baton passes. It’s very exciting to see and all of that is enabled by having the facilities, and the people and the methods. So yeah, it’s an exciting journey into ’26,” summed up Cowell, who adds on Honda’s integration and stability on the driver front for at least 2026 season.
Everyone is together and already working towards 2026. “We’re super fortunate,” continued Cowell. “We’ve got this exciting run into ’26, changing the power unit – we’re working with Honda on that – changing the aerodynamics, we’ve got Adrian working on that, we’ve got new facilities. But the stability that we’ve got in having Lance and Fernando signed up for next year means that they’re not only helping us now develop the tools that we’re using for ’26, ’27 and beyond.
“But they’re working directly on the concept of the car. The discussions in the wind tunnel are about the aerodynamic shape, but they’re also about driver environment. How much space is there in the cockpit? Adrian tends not to leave much space in the cockpit. Everything’s exceptionally tight. But that stability of having two drivers signed up through into ’26 is really helping us,” summed up Cowell.
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