Aston Martin Announces New Team Principal Amid Internal Restructuring

Saajan Jogia | Jan 10, 2025

Nov 23, 2024; Las Vegas, Nevada, USA; Aston Martin driver Fernando Alonso (14) during the Las Vegas Grand Prix at Las Vegas Circuit. Mandatory Credit: Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images / Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images

Aston Martin has announced that team principal Mike Krack has stepped down from his role to become the team's Chief Trackside Officer. Replacing him will be the team's CEO, Andy Cowell, who will manage both roles at the same time. The big move is part of Aston Martin's efforts to achieve a flatter organizational structure.

Cowell joined the Silverstone outfit in October last year amid the team's lack of progress on the AMR24 F1 car, which resulted in the team's fifth-place finish in the Constructors' Championship for the second consecutive year. Aston Martin's Aerodynamics, Engineering, and Performance Departments have split into two- a trackside team and an AMR Technology Campus-based team. Both teams will now report to Cowell.

While Krack, who joined Aston Martin in 2022, will lead the trackside team, the team's new Chief Technical Officer, Enrico Cardile, will head the AMR Technology Campus-based team. He will focus on the architecture, design, and build of the team's new F1 cars.

Aston Martin added in a statement that Tom McCullough will remain in a leadership position and will play a role in the "team's broader range of racing categories."

Speaking on the structural changes and addressing the changes to become a "championship-winning team" in the future, Cowell said:

"I have spent the last three months understanding and assessing our performance, and I've been incredibly impressed by the dedication, commitment and hard work of this team. With the completion of the AMR Technology Campus and our transition in 2026 to a full works team, alongside our strategic partners Honda and Aramco, we are on a journey to becoming a Championship-winning team. These organisational changes are a natural evolution of the multi-year plans that we have scheduled to make and I'm incredibly excited about the future."

Aston Martin's restructuring follows Krack's recent revelation, in which he stressed the urgency of addressing the team's performance slump in 2024. He said:

"We delivered below expectation, so we cannot be happy with how our season went.

"We stay in P5, but had the championship started in the summer, we would not finish in P5. So, I think in all we need to reflect on the season and see it very critically.

"The steps that we have brought to the car have not managed to improve the car and there is a little bit of parallel last year in all that. The difference is that we have started better last year and we have not started at that same high level this year.

"So, I think there's plenty for us to look at in terms of how we how we do these things because we have now, two years in a row, not really managed to improve from where we started but rather slipped back."