Cowell downplays Newey’s claim “weak” simulator will take two years to fix | Formula 1
Aston Martin CEO Andy Cowell has downplayed suggestions his team’s new Driver-in-the-Loop simulator has a flaw which will take years to correct.
Adrian Newey, the team’s managing technical partner, told the official F1 channel the team’s simulator was “weak” and getting its facilities up to scratch was “probably a two-year project.” He said the problem lies in correlating the simulator data with what the team sees in the real world.However Cowell stressed it is not unusual for teams to encounter such correlation problems.
“Whenever you create new equipment it takes a while to commission it and then work out how well correlated either the or the wind tunnel is with the real world here,” he told Sky. “So you need to do some updates, you need to bring it to the track, you need to see how everything matches up.
“That’s correlation and even experienced teams have problems with correlation. You hear it up and down the pit lane.
“The great thing with Adrian is he’s coming in and saying what is great, he’s setting the level that is really good and so we’ve got to lift up to that. And it’s work that we were already working on, but Adrian just helps refine the jobs list.”
Aston Martin owner Lawrence Stroll has invested heavily in expanding and upgrading the team’s facilities including the factory, wind tunnel, simulator and other car development hardware. Cowell said it will go through a continuous programme of upgrades.
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“Adrian spent the last two months with us just focusing on the architecture for the ’26 car,” he said. “And I can’t think of anybody better in the industry for reading a set of rules, looking at the high level and positioning all the key parts in the right location. So we’re very fortunate with that.
“We also know that we need to have all the simulation tools to help refine that and help set that overall goal. But it will be ongoing work. I don’t think we’ll ever say that our toolset is perfect. There’ll always be areas that we need to work on.
“So Adrian said it’ll take a couple of years, I think it’s just going to be ongoing work for us, constantly chasing and improving every single toolset that we’ve got.”