Aston Martin: Cowell praises Alonso and Stroll line-up

With this in mind, Andy Cowell regularly works to praise his driver pairing and their efforts.

The team principal has emphasised the value that Fernando Alonso brings:

“He’s a remarkable individual,” he told GpBlog.

“When you look at the racing categories that he’s had success in and enjoyed, but also his competitive drive and insight.

“Every conversation he suggests something. Sometimes when people suggest things and you think – ”why didn’t you think of that?’

“Yes, he can do that across a broad spectrum – not just car setup.

“So he’s a great contributor to performance improvement ideas, and his instinctive competitiveness means he’s hungry to have it today.”

Cowell also praised Stroll for “his youth, and his hunger and his feedback.”

The former Mercedes engineer makes sure to highlight what he perceives as the Canadian’s strengths.

Aston Martin under pressure

Of course, Fernando Alonso’s hunger to succeed is still within the confines of reality.

The Spaniard is aware that 2026 is Aston Martin’s best chance of making significant progress and climbing to the front.

As a result, the Double World Champion is perhaps able to stomach the AMR25’s poor performance better than he would have otherwise.

Still, this does not negate the external criticisms being thrown towards the British team.

After all, Aston Martin set slower qualifying times last weekend than they did in 2024 – the kind of statistic that exemplifies their trajectory.

For the last eighteen months, Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll have received upgrades that fail to deliver the necessary performance.

This has pushed Aston further down the field – largely dampening the excitement surrounding their 2026 project, which will feature the involvement of key players like Adrian Newey and Honda.

Speaking of 2026, Cowell’s personnel are in the process of calibrating their new wind tunnel and simulation tools.

This means their upcoming update package, set to arrive in the coming weeks, has elevated importance.

Not only will the AMR25’s updates define the team’s trajectory for what remains of 2025, but it will also inform whether Aston Martin can be confident in their new development tools.

In this sense, Lawrence Stroll’s team can hit two birds with one stone.

If their upgrades work as intended, they should be able to take a step forward and be more competitive in 2025.

Simultaneously, their development for the new regulations can begin to ramp up – in the confident their correlation between factory and circuit is accurate.

Of course, there is also the risk that Aston’s upgrades do not behave as intended – which would create immense doubt looking ahead to next year.