Unearth Your Greatness: Andy Cowell on designing success

Together with our Principal Partner, Maaden, our exclusive six-part series deep-dives into the aspirations, motivations and challenges of key members of our team and explores how those factors allow them to unearth their greatness.

In the third episode, Aston Martin Aramco CEO and Team Principal Andy Cowell explores how teamwork allows him to unearth greatness and reveals his secret to unlocking potential when it comes to car performance.

Watch the interview below, and keep scrolling for five key takeaways from Andy.

Unearth Your Greatness

Episode three: Andy

In the third episode of our new six-part series in collaboration with Maaden, Andy Cowell tours the AMR Technology Campus and explains how each department allows him to unearth his and the team's greatness.

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1 | Teamwork allows you to unearth greatness.

"In this Technology Campus, this is where the real race happens.

"Our culture is one that wants to win. We have a group of people that are enthusiastic about that. And it's a culture where we want to learn about the steps to go from today's situation to a situation where we can confidently fight at the front, win races and win championships.

"Every single department should deliver, whether it's commercial getting sponsors, whether it's engineers designing wishbones. Every single person, that's the target."

It's about having the ambition to have the problem of not having enough space in the trophy cabinet.

2 | Andy's experience leading engineers is key to team success.

"The journey is about looking at the way we approach the engineering of the race car. It's about taking the regulations and working out how we're going to create a racing machine that's better than anybody else, and it's about having the ambition to have the problem of not having enough space in the trophy cabinet.

"The time that I've been leading engineers is the key to leading a team. It's understanding the human being that is the engineer, and now it's working with a wider group of people and the drivers."

3 | The secret is listening to the drivers.

"The drivers are in the car. They're feeling what the car is doing. You have to believe what they say and make sure the data marries up with what the drivers are seeing. Then you work on the bits that are going to make the car quicker. It's about listening to them, reacting to it and feeding back to them.

"With Fernando, when he got out of the car at the start of the year, he had instant feedback and was picking up on certain things. He spoke in great detail about what he was feeling. Some bits were better, some bits not so. That download of data was tremendous.

"Lance is the same. His passion for this team is amazing. When I talk to him about what we're working on with the '25 car, he'll say, 'Yeah, but Andy, think about medium and long term as well.'"

The vision is to get to the top and stay at the top,

4 | You should set goals everybody thinks are impossible.

"Set goals that everybody thinks are impossible, but then make it possible. The vision is to get to the top and stay at the top, to win multiple championships, back-to-back.

"It's the race to work out what the gap is and then achieve that quicker than our opponents. Everything comes down to a simple graph where 'performance improvement' is up the vertical axis and 'time' is along the horizontal. How can you improve the gradient?

"Then it's about going beyond that. How do you improve from the front? That's when you become a pioneer."

5 | Adrian is shifting the team's mindset.

"Adrian's attention to detail and his enthusiasm to push is just mind-blowing. It's lifted the whole organisation.

"I think that's where I've got the advantage, in that my career started off in engineering, developing components. And Adrian is 110% an engineer.

"He looks at the total car. He's not just an aerodynamicist. He’s not just a vehicle dynamicist. He designs the whole car and he looks at the whole aspect, from airflow, which is crucial for performance, but also the serviceability of the car so that you can do a ride height change quickly in FP1. He's into the fine detail of chasing aero performance but also understanding the whole aspect of a race weekend and how to get championship points."

Stand by for upcoming episodes in the 'Unearth your Greatness' series with Maaden, featuring Lawrence Stroll and more. And while you're waiting for the next episode to drop, make sure to check out the first two videos in the series with Fernando and Lance.