Author Archives: PressBox

Reports vary on the timing of Tom McCullough’s exit from Aston Martin, with some saying the performance director is set to leave at the end of the 2026 season and others saying he will fully depart later this year. His departure would end a 13-year spell with the team, which he joined in 2014 when it was Force India and stayed with through the Racing Point and Aston Martin eras.

McCullough became performance director in 2018 and played a key role in some of the team’s best results, including Force India’s back-to-back fourth-place finishes in 2016 and 2017 and Racing Point’s first Formula 1 victory in 2020. He also began his F1 career at Williams in 2002 and had a stint at Sauber before joining the team.

After Aston Martin’s 2025 leadership reshuffle under CEO Andy Cowell, Mike Krack took over McCullough’s trackside duties as chief trackside officer and much of his former Formula 1-side responsibility. McCullough moved to the team’s Performance Technologies arm, where he spent the last 20 months overseeing motorsport projects and other racing programs. Aston Martin is currently led on an interim basis by Adrian Newey as team principal, with Jonathan Wheatley widely expected to take over after leaving Audi.

Former Aston Martin team principal Otmar Szafnauer said the roots of the team’s Formula 1 problems were planted about five years ago, when Lawrence Stroll’s operation pushed for quick success without enough stability. Szafnauer said the constant turnover of personnel left the team short on continuity, and he pointed to Mercedes under Toto Wolff, Red Bull’s title-winning run and Ferrari under Ross Brawn as examples of how the strongest teams were built on stable leadership and staff.

Aston Martin’s rebuild has yet to deliver on track in 2026. The team started the season badly and sits 10th in the constructors’ standings with one point, scored by Fernando Alonso in Monaco. A major upgrade package introduced at the Hungarian Grand Prix brought some progress, with Alonso taking the team through the first part of qualifying there for the first time this season and the lighter, higher-downforce car reportedly cutting lap times by about two seconds. Even so, the team still trails Williams by 10 points and remains well below expectations.

Aston Martin has made major investments in its future, including a new factory or campus, a new wind tunnel, a Honda power unit partnership and the signing of Adrian Newey. The team also spent heavily at its Silverstone base before Formula 1’s cost cap arrived in 2021, but has not turned that spending into immediate success. Newey did not officially start until March 2, the wind tunnel was not ready until mid-April and Honda’s engine program was also behind schedule, while early-season upgrades were described as uncompetitive and unreliable. Aston Martin overhauled its processes later in the year, Newey has delayed AMR26 updates so they can be developed properly, and the first Honda engine upgrade is due at the Dutch Grand Prix, with a full Newey-led design not expected until 2027.

The FIA said it could not fix Formula 1’s 2026 engine regulations sooner because the sport’s governance structure required approval from Formula One Management and at least four of the five power-unit manufacturers, votes that never came. FIA single-seater director Nikolas Tombazis said the governing body had identified problems as early as 2022 from simulator data and had tried for the previous two years to make adjustments, but those efforts failed under the rules in place. He said the FIA could not act unilaterally and could not secure the supermajority needed to revise the regulations before the season.

Tombazis said the FIA expected complaints about the 2026 package, including the 50/50 power split, energy management, superclipping and algorithm-driven elements. Drivers including Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri criticized those features during the season, and the FIA later introduced emergency energy-management tweaks from the Miami Grand Prix to reduce extreme superclipping. Formula 1 has already agreed to shift the power split gradually toward a 60-40 balance by 2028, a change Tombazis said ideally should have arrived years earlier.

Tombazis said the criticism was “realistically only to be expected,” and added that the first half of the season had still produced “pretty exciting” racing. He said Mercedes had taken most of the wins but there had been little processional running. Looking further ahead, he said another engine overhaul is expected at the start of the next decade, with a return to V8 engines under discussion, and he said future regulations could not be “held hostage by manufacturers.”

Ferrari plans to keep pushing its aggressive 2026 development program under Fred Vasseur, who said the team’s top priority for the rest of the season is maintaining its current pace of upgrades and continuing to find gains from the power unit. He described Ferrari’s year as having two phases, with Mercedes ahead before the Spanish Grand Prix and Ferrari responding strongly in the races that followed.

Ferrari’s steady flow of updates has helped deliver wins in Barcelona and Silverstone, and the team entered the summer break second in the constructors’ championship with two victories. Vasseur said Ferrari must keep bringing parts almost every race as it works through the remaining 10 to 12 races, and Charles Leclerc also urged the team to stay aggressive as McLaren closes the gap. Leclerc said there were still 12 races left.

Vasseur said Ferrari still needs to improve execution, chassis development and engine performance, and he expects a second ADUO power-unit upgrade later in the season. Mercedes boss Toto Wolff has questioned how Ferrari is staying within the cost cap while continuing its upgrade push.