Aston Martin has a first half of the season made up of ups and downs. At first the English stable presents itself as the big surprise of 2023, placing itself as second force behind Red Bull. However, the Silverstone team is unable to keep up with the development of the competition, on all Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren, gradually losing ground. The AMR23 is slowed by the side effects brought by Canada’s large package of updates, facing all the risks and difficulties of developing a single-seater with ground effect.
The start of the year surprise
There were already indications that Aston Martin could become a top team. In 2022, the Silverstone team began the championship as the penultimate force in the field, only to be the protagonist of a remarkable recovery. At the end of the year, the AMR22 was in fact the sixth fastest car on the track, losing the direct battle against Alfa Romeo in the standings on equal points only. However, continuing on the path traced out in the first year of the new regulations was not enough. The 2023 car was born as a revolution rather than an evolution of its progenitor. The AMR23 is presented as new in 95% of its aerodynamic components, but the novelty lies not so much in the external shapes, as in the concept and in the way the car is designed to work.
The technical department led by Dan Fallows, Luca Furbatto and Tom McCollough sets itself the very ambitious goals for the 2023 project, being rewarded by the stopwatch. Conversely, Ferrari and Mercedes maintain a more cautious approach, growing less proportionally from one season to the next. This difference is already emblematic of how, with the same regulation, there are those who suddenly grow but also those who are slowed down by the management of secondary effects, including balancing and porpoising.
However, it would be simplistic to attribute Aston Martin’s initial leap to the limited progress of the competition. The numbers show instead how the English team is the protagonist of an important technical recovery. In the last five qualifying rounds of 2022, Aston Martin’s average gap to Red Bull was 1.3%. At the beginning of 2023, the delay appears to have more than halved, falling to 0.6% in the first three qualifications of the year. Even more than on the flying lap, however, it is in the race that the AMR23 gives its best, docile on the tires thanks to the abundant aerodynamic load, good balance and stability, without sudden or unpredictable behaviour.
The car
At the beginning of the year there was no shortage of comments on the similarities between Aston Martin and Red Bull, attributing the reason to the migration of engineers from the second to the first. In reality, however, the AMR23 does not resemble the RB19 any more than Alpine, McLaren or AlphaTauri already do. The slide bellies recall those of Red Bull, a solution now widespread among all teams. In the upper part, however, the sides are hollowed out and have a marked channel, absent on the Milton Keynes car.
Aston Martin also deviates from Red Bull in other critical areas, including the shape of the side air intakes and suspension layouts. At the rear, the AMR23 is bound to pull-rod geometry, having to adapt to the choices of Mercedes, from which he buys the change. The push-rod at the rear, however, would be the best scheme from an aerodynamic point of view so as not to hinder the flows collected by the bumped bellies. Mercedes’ slow conversion to slide sides could push the Brackley-based team to switch to push-rod next year, a solution that would eventually also benefit Aston Martin.
Up front, however, the Silverstone team is free from constraints and can adopt the scheme it prefers. Aston Martin bets on geometry opposite to that of Red Bull, creating a push-rod kinematics against the pull-rod of the RB19, demonstrating how the AMR23 is much more than a simple copy. However, the two cars have in common the anti-dive scheme, with the arms arranged in such a way as to minimize the forward rotations of the car under braking, to the advantage of aerodynamic stability, the center of pressure and therefore balance.
Season
Among the pursuing cars, at the start Aston Martin is the one that can count on the greatest load levels. Furthermore, contrary to Red Bull, the AMR23 is at its best on the most driven and heavily loaded circuits. Partly the reason lies in the absence of long straights, area where the car suffers the greatest delays. During the year, however, there was no shortage of updates to the wings and beam-wings which help to find efficiency, improving the situation on the straight.
Aston Martin has some of its own in low-to-medium speed cornering and traction main strong points. It is no coincidence that Alonso comes close to a sensational pole position and potentially victory in Monaco, a track that also coincides with characteristics less friendly to Red Bull. Another race where the AMR23 shows off is Canada, well digesting the high curbs of the Montreal circuit, always unlike Red Bull.
However, with the arrival of spring, Aston Martin’s results began to deteriorate. It must be said that in such a compact group even one or two tenths can make the difference between second and eighth position, but that of Aston Martin is a general decline. The gap in qualifying from Red Bull rises from 0.6% in the first three races to 0.8-0.9%, even before the Silverstone round in which Pirelli introduces the new tyres strengthen. Alonso points to the tires as the reason for the summer difficulties, but the decline shown in previous races suggests that there are more than one cause.
The reasons for the decline
There are several possible interpretations behind Aston Martin’s slowdown, one of which does not exclude the other. Firstly, it cannot be ruled out that the AMR23 soon approached its maximum potential, while Mercedes and Ferrari had more performance to extract than at the start of the year. Not to be overlooked are the rumors, never confirmed but not officially denied either, according to which Aston Martin is more affected than others by the recent FIA crackdown on the flexibility of the front wings.
The main responsibility, however, is probably the side effects that arrived with the updates to the front wing in Barcelona and then with the substantial package from Canada, which affects the sides and bottom. Mike Krack explains: “These cars are very complex. Developing no longer means simply increasing the load more and more. Very often go introduce some characteristic changes to the machine or create other effects and probably this is what happened”.
Adds the Team Principal again a few weeks later: “We are constantly pushing development and these cars are so complex that each change impacts other areas of the carThere are side effects. When you make changes to the machine, there are few who work in isolation. We made a change during the season and we didn’t expect it to cause any side effects. It was only after numerous races and different types of circuits that we realized how it was affecting the car.” Mike Krack’s words recall those of Mattia Binotto, when in 2022 he spoke of a Ferrari limited by the secondary behaviors that occurred after the Paul Ricard updates.
Aston Martin’s first half of 2023 encompasses all the essence of the new ground effect regulations. Making sudden leaps forward is possible, but with each new advance comes the risk of compromising the balance of the machine due to its extreme sensitivity. The hope is that in the second half of the year the Silverstone team will be able to solve its problems. Part of the solution may be the new fund that debuted at Spawhose true potential has yet to be seen, given the time needed to understand how to make the most of it.
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