Tag: Aston Martin

Andy Cowell is the new team principal of the Aston Martin Formula 1 team following a restructuring that sees Mike Krack take on a trackside role.

Krack has been Aston Martin team principal since joining in 2022, but has been replaced by Cowell — who was already group CEO — “for clarity of leadership and as part of a shift to a flatter structure.” Cowell only joined in October of last year, and was a highly rated signing following his previous achievements as managing director of Mercedes’ power unit company High Performance Powertrains (HPP).

Aston Martin says it is separating its aerodynamics, engineering and performance departments into trackside and factory-based teams, with both reporting into Cowell.

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The change in team principal sees Krack handed trackside responsibility as chief trackside officer, meaning his jurisdiction no longer extends to the factory personnel. That falls under the remit of new chief technical officer Enrico Cardile, with the former Ferrari technical director a new recruit this year, and overseeing “a team that can now focus 100% of its time on the competitive ingenuity challenge of creating a new race car.”

As part of the restructuring, experienced performance director Tom McCullough will move away from the trackside F1 team and take on a leadership positions within the wider group, focusing on the expansion of the team’s other racing categories.

“I have spent the last three months understanding and assessing our performance, and I’ve been incredibly impressed by the dedication, commitment and hard work of this team,” Cowell said. “With the completion of the AMR Technology Campus and our transition in 2026 to a full works team, alongside our strategic partners Honda and Aramco, we are on a journey to becoming a championship-winning team. These organizational changes are a natural evolution of the multi-year plans that we have scheduled to make and I’m incredibly excited about the future.”

The restructuring follows a change in the technical department late last season, with Dan Fallows leaving his position as technical director and moving into a group role.

At the time, McCullough suggested it was due to the lack of progress with the team’s in-season car development, as Aston Martin finished a distant fifth in the constructors’ championship and scored 94 points in 2024 compared to 280 the year before. On both occasions, Aston started the year with a more competitive car than it finished the season with.

The organizational changes are in advance of Adrian Newey’s arrival as managing technical partner at Aston Martin later this year.

 

Dan Fallows leaving his position as the Aston Martin Formula 1 team’s technical director is down to the team’s performance and not Adrian Newey’s arrival, according to performance director Tom McCullough.

Aston Martin announced Fallows will step down last week, with a statement saying he would be remaining with the wider group. The former Red Bull head of aerodynamics has been with the team since 2022, but McCullough says the fact that Newey will make the same switch next year is not the catalyst for Fallows’ departure.

“No, I think ultimately this decision has been made by the team prior to that,” McCullough said. “The performance of the team this year hasn’t been at the level that we’ve all been wanting it to be at. So we haven’t quite delivered there, and that’s basically been the decision made by the team.

“I sat next to Dan for the last two or three years, since he’s been here, working closely with him. He had a really big impact on the development of the ’22 car, the ’23 car — he has brought a lot to the team. So from that side, it’s been good fun working with him, but ultimately, during ’24 we haven’t delivered on track to the level that we were expecting to and wanted to. The development of these cars has been hard; ultimately it’s a performance-based industry, and the team’s made the decision to make some changes.”

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McCullough believes Aston Martin has the existing personnel and structure to pick up Fallows’ responsibilities without having to hire an external replacement.

“[Executive director] Bob Bell joined early in the year. Overall, Bob’s been overseeing technical functions — I report to Bob, as Dan did, as Luca [Furbatto, engineering director] does. We have strength in depth within the team, so those roles are being shared. We have Eric [Blandin,] on the aero side, taking on quite a lot of the roles at this stage. But ultimately, Bob’s the one responsible.”