Cardile: No excuses! Failure not an option for Aston Martin

Former Ferrari Technical Director, Cardile, who officially joined Silverstone-based Aston Martin after a lengthy gardening leave, spoke candidly about his role, his move from Maranello, and the team’s ambitions in a detailed interview for the Undercut series.

Cardile explained that his position as Chief Technical Officer is all-encompassing across car design and performance development: “I'm in charge of all development of the car. 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.”

While his workdays are unpredictable, Cardile embraces that dynamism: “There is absolutely no routine. I'm a lucky man in this respect. I get to be involved in discussions all week and see how various projects are maturing and progressing. It's highly dynamic and absolutely addictive. I get paid for following my passion so, as I say, lucky.”

Cardile added that his role is not to dictate technical solutions but to lead through vision and coordination: “Whenever I'm in a meeting, I shouldn't be the expert voice. If I am, something is going wrong. The specialists should be the best in their field. Rather than me providing them with solutions, I should be exploiting their skillset, their knowledge, their experience.”

The 50-year-old described his leadership approach as one of clarity and decisiveness: “I bring the vision of the organisation, I bring clarity, I bring decision-making. If I'm doing my job correctly, the role is to be asking the right question at the right moment, hopefully understanding the answer and making a decision accordingly.”

He believes that flexibility and adaptability are essential to success in Formula 1: “I'm not scared of making decisions, and I don't need to have 100 per cent of the information available. Sometimes, you need to make a decision with the information you have... and then keep working on the problem. Ultimately, what matters is winning. It's not about who got it wrong or right, and it's not a culture of blame.”

Cardile confirmed that he will remain focused on factory development this year rather than attending races: “I'm not planning on attending any races this year. There's so much work to be done here at the AMR Technology Campus, and the activity around the 2026 car has my full focus.”

The Italian engineer, who spent his entire professional career at Ferrari before joining Aston Martin, has relocated fully to the UK. “Yes. I want to be fully committed, fully focused, with no distractions. I'm completely here now... I couldn't have the focus this job demands if my life were split between Italy and here.”

On what drew him to the project, he said: “I decided to join Aston Martin Aramco and move my life to the UK because this is an amazing project with an incredible commitment and strong will to win from the owner. I fell in love with Lawrence Stroll’s determination, his vision – and the Technology Campus he's built to realise it.”

Cardile acknowledged the culture shock of leaving Ferrari’s deeply rooted systems for a younger, growing team: “The targets are the same – everyone is focused on winning – but Ferrari has a very long and stable history, with established processes and tools. Here, we're still building up these things. We have the new CoreWeave Wind Tunnel, the new simulator, and we need to work to exploit the potential of these things.”

He continued: “We need to find our identity and use our vision to shape the organisation. It's fine to take inspiration from other places, but copying the way it has been done elsewhere is not the thing to do. You can't simply copy what someone else is doing because that means being a follower, rather than a leader, and that's not the route to success.”

Cardile reports directly to both Aston Martin CEO and Team Principal Andy Cowell and Managing Technical Partner Adrian Newey: “I report to both. 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 about Cowell’s ambition to make Aston Martin a “creative, chaotic innovation machine,” Cardile agreed: “We need to do stuff differently from other teams, and to do that, we need to be innovative and not mind that this process will come with a bit of chaos. We have to manage the chaos because it will bring positives and greater innovation than if we were an extremely structured, rigid organisation.”

He described the internal philosophy as one of constant evolution: “We're never going to be satisfied, never going to be happy, because once something works, we'll already be looking for what comes next. We'll push people – in a positive manner – and set ambitious targets. No one will be left without help; the difficult challenges aren’t a problem for one person but for the organisation to solve.”

With the new Formula 1 regulations less than a year away, Cardile is fully focused on the opportunity to reset the competitive order: “It's going to be a big departure from what we have now. The aerodynamic concept is changing completely; the reduced minimum weight will be an enormous challenge for everyone. There is a new power unit, there is new fuel. It's a lot of variables up in the air.”

He revealed that Aston Martin has adopted a bold and flexible approach: “Some of it is about understanding where to gamble: there are development directions that might not yield positive results straight away, but may help us reach ambitious final targets. We're making some bets.”

Cardile’s commitment to the long-term project is absolute: “It's not just about having a quick car at the start of 2026. We're working on the organisation, improving our tools, improving our processes, changing the way people are working together. In a word, we're working on the culture of the team.”

Looking ahead to Formula 1’s next chapter, Cardile’s enthusiasm is unmistakable: “Excitement. Definitely. Not just for our car. I'm looking forward to seeing the other 10 cars, to see everyone's performance, to know if we're in a good position and have to keep pushing to keep the advantage or if we need to keep pushing to catch teams that are quicker than us.”

He closed with a defiant statement of intent: “We're going to get it right next year. I just don't know if we're going to get it right for the first race, the second, the seventh, or whatever. What we have is commitment, focus, and the confidence that it will be right. We have all we need to do a great job. Failure is not an option.”