Adrian Newey and Enrico Cardile: Meet F1’s new double act at Aston Martin

Aston Martin’s new chief technical officer, Enrico Cardile, has opened up on his arrival at Silverstone and how he and Adrian Newey will work together.

Some 15 months after confirmation of his switch to Aston Martin from Ferrari, Enrico Cardile has arrived at the Silverstone-based squad to begin working as the chief technical officer for Lawrence Stroll’s squad.

Who will Enrico Cardile be reporting to?

Cardile arrives at an organisation already stacked with top engineering talent, with Andy Cowell leading overall team direction as CEO and team principal after Stroll coaxed the former Mercedes HPP boss to end a four-year sabbatical from F1.

Former team boss Mike Krack heads up trackside operations, while long-time Renault man Bob Bell is now executive director of the technical department, and Eric Blandin is aerodynamics director.

Last year, Aston Martin landed the most sought-after signature in car design as former Red Bull chief technical officer Adrian Newey signed on to join as managing technical partner alongside a small team shareholding, while Cardile was secured from Ferrari.

Through his illustrious career, Newey has been a party in some powerhouse technical partnerships, such as his dominant spells at Williams with Patrick Head, at McLaren with Neil Oatley and, at Red Bull with the likes of Pedro Prodromou, Rob Marshall, and Pierre Waché.

Following a lengthy gardening leave period, Cardile has now started work with Aston Martin – one of the many senior technical figures within the organisation, hired to utilise and exploit the best of the brand-new infrastructure available at the Aston Martin campus after several years of capital investment from Stroll.

Hailing from an aerodynamics background himself, Cardile slots into an organisation stacked with technical talent, and one potential stumbling block for Cowell will be in ensuring that the prominent names at the top of Aston Martin’s technical structure don’t butt heads or tread on each other’s toes.

In his first interview since joining Aston Martin, Cardile himself has addressed who he reports to, with both Newey and Cowell as his bosses.

“I report to both,” he confirmed. “One or the other, according to the different elements of the work, but both are my bosses. Again, I’m a lucky man. It’s an amazing team, and I’m surrounded by special people.”

Asked directly what can be done to ensure the various names within the technical structure don’t interfere with each other’s remits, Cardile said he doesn’t believe it to be a concern.

“We have no problems in this respect – the issue, if anything, is the opposite: we’re trying to find the best way of collaborating, and blending our efforts, rather than working in silos,” he said.

“This is key for us – and for any F1 team: sharing information, creating something that’s richer than the sum of the parts. It’s certainly not a problem having all of these good engineers in the same building, working together.

“Everyone has a clear remit, and people aren’t trying to do one another’s jobs. The key to making it work is the flow of information through the organisation. This has to be good. We need to get the integration right to avoid the misunderstandings that lead to rework, time wasted, and performance lost.

“It is a very stimulating place to work. There’s a huge amount of engineering talent in the team. The principle for me is that, whenever I’m in a meeting, I shouldn’t be the expert voice. If I am, something is going wrong. The people I’m talking to, the specialists, should be the best in their field. Rather than me providing them with solutions on request, I should be exploiting their skillset, their knowledge, their experience.”

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As chief technical officer, what will Cardile’s remit be?

“I’m in charge of all development of the car,” he said.

“Basically, all of the activities involved with designing the car and developing the tools we need to improve its performance. The role goes from the initial concept to aero development and vehicle dynamics – it includes the wind tunnel, CFD, and validation tools.

“Describing the day-to-day is more difficult because there is absolutely no routine. I’m a lucky man in this respect.

“I get to be involved in discussions all week and get to see how various projects are maturing and progressing. It’s very exciting, highly dynamic, and I love it. It’s not repetitive at all, and it is absolutely addictive. I get paid for following my passion so, as I say, lucky.”

Cardile confirmed that he has moved to the UK from Italy in order to be fully committed to Aston Martin, with his family also transitioning to a life in England. There’s no plan for Cardile to attend any races over the remainder of the F1 2025 campaign, but he will during the 2026 season as the brand-new AMR26 comes to life.

His focus, for now, will be on finding his feet with the organisation, streamlining his team, and slotting into the structure of technical heads that Stroll has entrusted to shape his team’s fortunes for the new regulation cycle.

Cardile believes his input, shaped from years of work at Ferrari, will offer Aston Martin more options in terms of opinion diversification with his new colleagues in leadership.

“I don’t know if it is fresh, but inevitably it will be different,” he said when asked if he brings a fresh perspective.

“Every time a new person joins the organisation, at whatever level, they bring a different way of doing things, based on whatever positive experiences they’ve had elsewhere. It’s down to the organisation to understand those and pull out the ones that can improve the way we’re working. It’s a dynamic process, but the team is always enriched by it.”

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