Ex-Mercedes designer takes up new role at Aston Martin

Aston Martin has secured the services of long-time Mercedes designer Duncan Elliott, who began work at the Silverstone-based squad this week.

Elliott has started work as a chief designer at Aston Martin, having served a period of gardening leave after parting ways with Mercedes. He reports to engineering director Luca Furbatto.

Duncan Elliott starts work at Aston Martin

In the week of the British Grand Prix, Aston Martin added further strength to its engineering and design team with Duncan Elliott starting work at the Silverstone-based squad.

Elliott forms part of the technical hierarchy at Aston Martin under managing technical partner Adrian Newey, adding further firepower to the outfit ahead of the revolutionary technical changes on the way for F1 2026.

Elliott departed Mercedes several months ago, believed to be at the tail end of the F1 2024 season, and served a period of gardening leave before taking up tools at Aston Martin.

He had spent 14 years in his previous role at Mercedes, where he served as head of composite design during the period of dominance for team Brackley that saw it win every title between 2014 and ’20, as well as the Constructors’ Championship in 2021.

Prior to his Mercedes tenure, he served as a senior engineer at Mercedes and oversaw the KERS (Kinetic Energy Recovery Systems) at Brawn GP and Honda in the mid to late 2000s.

According to the engineer’s professional social media profile, Elliott is an “experienced F1 Designer and Manager with a demonstrated history of working in a multitude of areas.

“Strong engineering design professional skilled in Composite design, Suspension Design, Transmission Systems, Project Management, Chassis Design, and Mechanical Engineering.”

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Elliott is another name to be added to Aston Martin’s roster of engineering prowess, following the arrival of names such as Bob Bell as executive director for the technical department, Adrian Newey as managing technical partner at the top of the organisation’s technical structure, and securing the signature of former Ferrari technical director Enrico Cardile, alongside existing talent like Eric Blandin and Mike Krack.

Earlier this year, Cowell told PlanetF1.com about how he intends to ensure that all of Aston Martin’s engineering figureheads are active contributors without anyone feeling sidelined or extraneous to requirements.

“I think that comes back to making sure that everybody’s responsibilities are clear,” he said.

“There’s a strong executive team in place already at Silverstone. We’re adding to that with experienced technical leaders. But every single one of those people understand that it’s a team game, and everybody’s got their own individual strengths.

“It’s about harnessing all those individual strengths, gluing it together, and making sure that… we’ve got great competitive ingenuity, but we’ve also got the means to do experiments on campus in Silverstone, where we conclude that the initial idea is going to make the race car quicker, and then we swiftly decide to turn the operations machine to make full size parts, and they arrive at the circuit quicker than ever before, manufactured to a great quality standard, they fit perfectly.

“Every single measurement on the car says, ‘Yes, it’s going to go quicker’, and it matches in precisely with what was measured in the factory, and any deviation from that – whether we get more lap time at the track or less laptime at the track – is a quality gap. It’s a breakdown in correlation.

“Adrian [Newey] knows full well… he’s a creative genius when it comes to race cars, he’s very competitive, but he knows it’s the strength of the whole organisation, and I think that’s one of the things that he’s attracted to, with regards to Lawrence’s vision of having all the building blocks in place.

“We’ll work as a team, and we’ll give each other open, honest feedback. I’m very open to that myself and all the people that I’m working with.

“I’m saying, ‘Help me. Help me get better. Point out if I’ve just done something that you think daft. Let’s have a chat. Don’t sit on it and fester’.

“I think that sort of honest constructive feedback, that’s the way we all get better – we’ll all play to our strengths and, hopefully, end up with a high-performing team and an exceptionally fast race car.”

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