Aston Martin have brought their first major upgrade package to the AMR25 for the F1 Imola GP this weekend, marking a critical test for the revamped technical structure under team boss Andy Cowell. The comprehensive update represents Cowell’s first significant technical evolution since taking leadership at Aston Martin.
The upgrade package includes substantial revisions across seven key components. The team has focused primarily on enhancing local aerodynamic load and optimising airflow, with modifications to the halo, floor body, floor fences, floor edge, diffuser, engine cover, and beam wing.
The halo features revised local detail around the rear mounts with a reduced fin, while the floor body has evolved with changes to fences and floor edge geometry. The team has also updated the floor fences with revised curvature and local details, and made small but significant adjustments to the floor edge wing.
When questioned about whether this weekend represents a litmus test for the team’s progress in addressing past weaknesses with upgrades in a print media session on Thursday, Cowell quipped: “Ask me on Sunday evening.”
Upon further pressing whether this was an important defining weekend for Aston Martin at Imola, Cowell elaborated:
“It’s a step. This is a floor and top bodywork package that was work continuing on in the back end of December through until the first race in Melbourne. A lot of the development work was done in the previous wind tunnel.”
He confirmed, “Not the full aero team, because from January, part of the full aero team were working on ’26. The final bits of mapping work were done in our new tunnel, and anything that we decide to do beyond this weekend will be clearly done in our new tunnel.”
Cowell addresses their past struggles of disconnect in the upgrades
The team’s approach to validating the upgrades at Imola will involve a direct comparison during practice sessions, with one car likely to run the new specification while the other maintains the previous package. This methodical approach reflects Cowell’s emphasis on thorough testing and clear experimental outcomes.
Aston Martin sits seventh in the standings with just 14 points from five races, a stark drop from 2023’s four podiums and 102 points at this stage. Fernando Alonso remains pointless, highlighting the team’s dramatic performance decline over the past two seasons.
Addressing the team’s past struggles with upgrade effectiveness, Cowell offered insight into their new philosophy:
“I think for anybody doing any job, it’s the approach that you take and it’s the tools that you use, and it’s both that need to be best in class in order to succeed, regardless of the industry. So we are fortunate that we’re now getting better tools to use and we are reflecting and trying to dig into the detail of why things didn’t work last year, some of which is direction, some of which is approach and it all comes down to the precision, the confidence that you’ve got in the number that you’re reading.”
Cowell emphasises importance of clear data and eliminating the “grey middle ground”
Cowell further emphasised the importance of clear experimental outcomes at the F1 Imola GP:
“We all live in this digital world where numbers are presented to three decimal places, and we believe it, but what’s the error band? So we’re trying to look in greater detail at what is the error band in everything that we measure.
“How do you do an experiment where you hope to have greater confidence to get a clear answer? When you do an experiment, I don’t care too much whether it’s a positive or a negative. I hate the grey middle ground because that’s where you’ve not thought about the journey that you’re taking. So we’re trying to make sure that every experiment we do we get greater success of having a clear answer.”
The upgrade package will offer Aston Martin’s new wind tunnel’s effectiveness
One interesting aspect of this upgrade package is that it represents a bridge between Aston Martin’s past and future development infrastructure. While much of the initial work was conducted in their previous wind tunnel, the final validation was performed in their state-of-the-art new facility at the AMR Technology Campus.
With the significant regulation changes looming in 2026, Aston Martin is using 2025 as a transitional year to integrate new engineers, refine processes, and establish a more robust technical foundation. The performance of this upgrade package at Imola will provide crucial data on whether their revised approach is yielding genuine improvements.
Cowell overhauled the technical team over winter. The new CEO tackled previous development “chaos” head-on. He eliminated the constant swapping of parts with uncertain effectiveness. Cowell implemented clearer processes for the 2025 season. This approach emphasises rigorous validation of upgrades before they reach the track, aiming for more robust and reliable performance gains.
For Aston Martin and Cowell, the real test at Imola is whether the gains seen in simulation and wind tunnel work match the car’s actual performance on track. By Sunday, they’ll know if their new technical approach is starting to solve the team’s core issues-or if they need to shift focus away from this season.
