Newey gets his way at Aston Martin: Former Red Bull executive makes switch

Giles Wood has made the move to Aston Martin, where Wood will engage with simulations as a ‘vehicle modelling director’. In this role, Wood is expected to play a significant part in enhancing performances that Adrian Newey was critical of.

In his first interviews in Monaco, Newey referred to Aston Martin's equipment as quite weak, with this comment mainly directed towards the simulator, with feedback from simulator drivers hardly usable. The correlation was not up to par, and with Wood's arrival, Aston Martin hopes to make the next step forward.

Wood and Newey started in 2004 as simulation lead at McLaren, where he worked for three years. He then moved to Red Bull Racing. There, Wood worked for over seven years with Newey, resulting in four world titles for the drivers and as a team. Wood then took up a role at Red Bull Technology as technical director and left for Apple in 2007.

Now, according to the British media, Wood has been persuaded to return to Formula 1. There, he would reunite with Adrian Newey, a significant reason for him to return.

Aston Martin's technical team had already been strengthened by the arrival of Gioacchino Vino. Vino worked with Newey at Red Bull in 2010 for a year, then at Renault and Mercedes in F1. From 2018 through 2024, Vino played a crucial role in the aerodynamics team, and he will now become the Chief Aerodynamicist of Aston Martin.