Aston Martin’s McCullough buoyed by team’s growth despite late 2023 slide · RaceFans

Aston Martin’s leap to the front of the field behind only Red Bull was a sensation at the start of last year’s Formula 1 season.

But despite six podiums in the opening eight rounds of the championship for the team’s new driver, Fernando Alonso, which put them as high as second in the constructors’ championship at one stage, the Silverstone-based team ultimately fell to fifth place by season’s end.

Aston Martin are a team with bold ambitions of not just fighting at the front but ultimately becoming bona fide championship contenders as much as Mercedes or Ferrari. With heavy financial investment in the team after the former Force India squad was taken over by a consortium of investors – led by CEO Lawrence Stroll – Aston Martin have been on a hiring spree over recent years and even opened their state-of-the-art new factory at Silverstone last summer, demonstrating how serious they are about achieving their lofty goals.

The team’s performance director, Tom McCullough, may not have been one of the blockbuster signings to the team as part of their rapid expansion, but he is no less central to the team’s 2023 success or important to their plans for this coming season. He says he can feel how the team has been evolving over the previous year.

“We are still in the process of every time I go back, the factory’s changing,” McCullough said at the end of last season. “Building three – the wind tunnel – is looking really impressive and making great progress. Building two – between the two of them, on a daily basis – is shooting up. And that’s obviously a lot of work for a lot of people who aren’t just focusing on designing, developing and manufacturing a Formula 1 car.

“Then we’ve brought new people into the team over the last 12-to-24 months. New people are still joining. And as a technical function, we’re all learning to work with each other. We’re all learning and understanding the regulations, the car, developing our processes, trying to improve, take input from all those different areas. And I just think the journey we’re on as far as a group of technical people – but also as a company – being able to design, manufacture stuff in a much shorter turnaround time.

“Every year you’re pushing these things, but we’ve got the firepower now to be pushing those things even later, which is ultimately part of becoming a team that’s fighting right at the front.”

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