After signing several high-profile names such as Adrian Newey and Enrico Cardile, Aston Martin also underwent a major restructuring of its technical hierarchy. With Lawrence Stroll wanting a flatter structure for his team, he decided to name Andy Cowell as the new team principal alongside his position as the Group CEO.
Cowell has now revealed why Stroll decided to make such a decision and what are his plans for the future.
“Lawrence was very clear that he wanted me to lead the team, work out what to do, how to inspire everybody, to set the mission, the vision, and live it,” the British engineer told Sky Sports’ Craig Slater in a recent interview.
Cowell has a steep challenge ahead of him, as Stroll’s intentions — with his ambitious hirings and $250 million investments — are clear about making Aston Martin a championship-winning team. The former Mercedes engine mastermind feels ready and revealed that he is “enjoying that challenge”. But what about the rest of the team?
Cowell is keen to ensure that the team underneath him is also aligned with the goals he’ll set.
Ahead of Aston Martin’s restructure, Fernando Alonso praised the impact new CEO and team principal Andy Cowell had already made.https://t.co/YKSWOMQWoY pic.twitter.com/qSB09YSvQr
— PlanetF1 (@Planet_F1) January 14, 2025
He elaborated on the various changes that Aston Martin made to their technical hierarchy and how he expects it to make the team more efficient. One of these changes involved former team principal Mike Krack being reassigned to the Chief Trackside Officer role.
This is basically a demotion for Krack, who was the team principal for three seasons at Aston. However, the Luxembourgish seems on board with the broader vision for his change of role and several other changes to the Silverstone outfit’s technical team under Cowell and Newey.
Krack will still play a crucial role in Aston Martin’s operations
Despite being demoted, Krack will continue to be one of Aston Martin‘s most senior figures. He will continue to lead the team’s operations trackside and may even be in charge in Cowell’s absence at certain race weekends.
This restructuring will also help Krack take up a role he is more familiar with. After all, he himself admitted in an interview earlier this year that when Aston Martin decided to offer him the team principal role in 2022, he was surprised.
“The expectation for engineering was because I had engineering roles in F1 before,” Krack told Crash.net after the season finale in Abu Dhabi last year. He still decided to take up the role despite not feeling prepared for it as it is not often that one receives such a fantastic opportunity.
As for Aston’s restructuring, Krack is not the only engineer whose role has changed. Long-time performance director, Tom McCollough will stay with the British car brand but will take up a role away from the F1 operation — mostly to expand Aston’s race programs into other motorsport disciplines.
Like McCollough, even former technical director, Dan Fallows has undergone a similar role change, staying with Aston Martin but moving away from the F1 side of things.
All these changes are to ensure that figures like Newey, Cowell, and incoming Chief Technical Officer Enrico Cardile among others can rejig Aston Martin and set them up for a successful stint in the upcoming era of regulations starting in 2026.
