Cowell's anecdote puts Newey's mastery of F1 in full display

In Monaco, Newey's first race weekend trackside with the British racing green coloured team, the British designer said that Aston Martin was facing a two-year-long handicap since the team's driver-in-the-loop simulator was still not performing at the desired level.

Now Cowell has disclosed the true intentions of Newey's statement. He said: “After Adrian did the interview, and as he walked away from that interview, he whispered in my ear and said, yeah, I just said two years, because I know it'll push the guys along. And we just smiled and had a laugh about it!”

Did Newey's idea work? According to Cowell, it did.

He said: “There's a lot of work going on to push the simulation, to make it more representative, and to make the cockpit environment more representative.

"There's a concerted effort to improve, and also to make sure that Adrian isn't focused on that. We want to make sure that he can be fully focused on something else,” Cowell cryptically added. Newey's work is widely known to be focused on Aston Martin's 2026 car.

Cowell then highlighted the team's spirit of pride, turning Newey's fire-instilling statements.

“That's the thing I love about the team spirit. We've all got pride in the areas that we're working on, and that's exactly the same within Aston Martin Formula 1 team," he ended.

The team owned by Lawrence Stroll experienced two very different weekends in Fernando Alonso's garage and in Lance Stroll's.

Whereas the Spaniard, having qualified 10th and after running in P8 for a long period of the Grand Prix, was forced to drive a comeback race after a botched pitstop, he, nonetheless, came home to a P8 finish, which would later become P7 with Lewis Hamilton's penalty for exceeding track limits.

For Lance Stroll it was yet another tough weekend, with the Canadian driver starting the race in P15 and finishing in P13.

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