As the Formula One teams prepare for the Qatar Grand Prix, Aston Martin made a huge announcement which stunned the paddock. Andy Cowell who was promoted to the role of team principal and CEO for the 2025 season would be replaced by Adrian Newey next year.

Rumours of Cowell getting the sack gathered pace in Las Vegas given his protest at Adrian Newey’s dismissal of a number of staff from the team’s design department. This raised the elephant in the room as to who was actually in charge of the F1 team with Cowell believing his authority had been undermined.

Andy Cowell who is credited as the brains behind the all conquering Mercedes 2014 V6 hybrid power unit will be redeployed at Aston Martin to oversea the integration of the Honda power units along with other partnerships the team maintains. Join the discussion below

 

 

 

Aston Martin: Four TP’s in four seasons

Billionaire team owner Lawrence Stroll issued a statement: “Andy Cowell has been a great leader this year. He’s focused on building a world-class team and getting them to work well together, as well as fostering a culture that puts the race car back at the heart of what we do.

“This leadership change is a mutual decision we have reached in the interest of the team. We all look forward to continuing working with him in his new capacity.”

Aston Martin have now had four team principals in four years in Otmar Szafnauer, Mike Krack, Andy Cowell and now Adrian Newey.  The bombshell stunned many F1 analysts given that Newey is somewhat camera shy and avoids publicity at all costs.

Yet the role of the team principal is to deal with many media demands across and F1 weekend and to give impromptu live interviews for the many networks which broadcast Formula One. Join the discussion below

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Ferrari tried this and failed

Further, there will be countless tedious meetings for Newey to endure with the department heads representing HR, PR and a while whose of other non F1 car design issues. Surely this dilutes the impact Newey should be having on the engineering side of things and his title of Managing Technical Partner was sufficient to ensure the key activities of the team are tightly managed.

There is a trend in modern F1 to employ engineers as the team principal as McLaren have proven with great success. Yet it hasn’t always worked well as Ferrari demonstrated when they promoted one of their finest engineers – Mattia Binotto – to the role of heading up the Scuderia.

Binotto was removed from his role after three seasons, following a very public row with Charles Leclerc at the British Grand Prix in 2022. The teams race strategy department was chaotic and the Italian was unable to fix this and it was perceived Binotto lacked the ruthless kind of leadership style required to develop; op a championship winning team.

Whilst Newey is 67 years of age and has seen it all with F1’a rise from racing in abandoned air fields to the most watched global sport annually, his genius has always been on the technical side of an F1 team and its questionable whether he can give the kind of thundering rally call to all the troops after a difficult weekend racing.

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Can Newey sack Lance Stroll?

Then there’s the huge political decision which must be made, over the team owner’s son who is currently driving for the team. Lance Stroll is 1-21 in his head to head in qualifying with ageing team mate Fernando Alonso, and he visibly lacks the ability to be driving in a front running F1 team. Can Newey tell Lawrence to his face he is sacking his son?

Yet this may not be the end game move for Aston Martin, given the BBC reported that Newey gave Christian Horner an “under cover of darkness” tour of the Silverstone facilities on Tuesday evening. Formula One team HQ’s are mostly a 24/7 type of facility, particularly in the production and assembly departments where shift patterns for the employees ensure parts are being constantly produced.

To this end it would be nigh on impossible for Horner to attend the Silverstone facility, without someone noticing he was there. Newey of course would know this and clearly doesn’t care it becomes public knowledge which may indicate Aston Martin’s announcement yesterday is not the final part of the jigsaw. 

The role of CEO held by Cowell lies vacant with Newey announced just a team principal, so a la McLaren with Zak Brown (CEO) and Andrea Stella (TP), Aston Martin may be lining up a role for Horner when his gardening leave concludes in April next year.

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Horner lurks in the shadows at Silverstone

Christian Horner is the puppet master when it comes to dealing with the paddock, the media and disputes with other competitors. It’s a role he has mastered over two decades and something in which Newey has no experience.

The BBC suggest sources at Aston Martin havre denied Horner will be offered a role at Aston Martin, but this reflects the position as presented by Cowell after the summer break. Unlike Newey, who was released from Red Bull with few restrictions, Horner may not be allowed to associate with another team before the end of his gardening leave.

This explains the denials which are in some fashion rather trite, given the way Lawrence Stroll has been collecting the “who’s who” of F1 for his squad like baseball cards. So to rule out anyone, particularly of Horner’s stature, is now unbelievable.

Much was made of the rift between Newey and Horner when the Re Bull boss was accused of an “inappropriate relationship” with a female employee in Milton Keynes. Christian was exonerated twice over the complaint, but the timing of Newey’s announcement he was leaving the team started a narrative that his resignation was due to a prudish displeasure at his long standing partner in crime’s behaviour – which was nonsense.

Marko mcks McLaren over Las Vegas

 

 

 

Lawrence Stroll rhetoric changes

“Might this still be an interim solution, not necessarily removing the team principal title from Newey, which he will hold into the 2026 season and onwards,” Sky’s Craig Slater queried on hearing the news. “Is there space still for a chief executive figure, perhaps along the lines of the job Zak Brown does at McLaren, and could that figure possibly still be Christian Horner?”

Yet if Horner is not part of the master plan, Newey is taking on a challenge he has never faced before. Rival team bosses will seek to distract him with the politics of Formula One, but what Lawrence really wants is a car capable of wining Grand Prix and champion ships.

When Newey arrived at the ashes of the Ford owned Jaguar F1 team, he went four seasons before he produced a title winning car. Whilst the facilities at Silverstone will be far improved on those Newey discovered at the old Jordan factory in Silverstone, it takes time to build a technical team capable of designing championship winning cars. Three years may not be enough to complete that task of taking the Silverstone based team to the top of F1 but it appears Lawrence Stroll has been briefed on such matters given his recent rhetoric change.

When he acquired the team which was renamed now five seasons ago, Stroll opined his goals were to be racing at the front in five years time. In a recent interview this timescale had risen to ten years, maybe in recognition its time to stop sacking key individuals and set in for the long haul.

 

 

 

Marko doesn’t believe Newey is team principal material

Aston Martin’s putting all their eggs in one basket with Adrian Newey in Formula 1 starting next season. The legendary designer and aerodynamics guru will also assume the role of team principal, replacing Andy Cowell at the British racing team in 2026. Cowell will take on the role of chief strategist, but Red Bull’s Helmut Marko is extremely sceptical about Newey’s role at Aston Martin.

The move sent shockwaves through the paddock, with Red Bull senior advisor Helmut Marko being taken aback more than anyone.

“I was just as surprised as everyone else in the paddock,” he told German broadcaster RTL…. READ MORE