After a crackling start to the season, in which the AMR23 had often proven to be the second force on the grid, the last few months have held little satisfaction for Aston Martin, given the numerous progress made by its rivals and the difficulties encountered by the Silverstone team during the development.
With six podiums in the first eight rounds of the championship, the enthusiasm at Aston Martin was palpable, with the dream of aiming for victory in some particularly favorable event for the car. However, from the Spanish Grand Prix onwards there was a progressive decline in performance, with only a few exploits bringing a smile back.
Speaking before the Belgian Grand Prix, Mike Krack explained that the team realized they had followed the wrong path in the development phase. A thought then confirmed a few weeks later, explaining how the basis of these problems were simulations that had misled the engineers.
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin AMR23
Hoping to make up for its mistakes, Aston Martin showed up in Austin with its last substantial package of the season. According to the team, the updates introduced in America should have corrected what had not worked in recent months, also helping to resolve those balance problems that had made the car increasingly unpredictable. However, not everything went according to plan. Indeed, the US stage proved to be one of the most complicated of the year, so much so that it was decided to start from the pit lane by diversifying the packages available to the two drivers: if Lance Stroll’s car had retained the new features, Fernando Alonso’s had mounted the old package. A drastic approach, which however allowed a direct comparison between the various solutions.
If the good performances in the race had somehow deluded us, the following GP, that of Mexico, brought everyone back down to earth. On a track with little grip, the two AMR23s were the protagonists of a disappointing weekend, which ended with both cars retiring. Nonetheless, the team leaders were confident that, despite the subdued weekend, there were still positives to learn from.
In fact, the engineers believed they had accumulated important data from the two races, which allowed them to have a better understanding of the package. All this led to the Brazilian Grand Prix, where Aston Martin did not conduct any experiments in free practice given the little time available before parc fermé, but simply presented itself with a specification on which it had clear ideas, thus building a weekend which saw her finish with a podium and a good fifth place.
![Aston Martin, detail of the bottom brought in the latest update package](https://cdn-6.motorsport.com/images/mgl/2y3XXwe6/s1000/128-23-aston-martin-sidepods-a-1.jpg)
Photo by: Giorgio Piola
Aston Martin, detail of the bottom brought in the latest update package
Speaking about the experiments conducted in the United States and Mexico, Fernando Alonso explained that they were painful from a performance point of view, but necessary to understand which direction to take in the future: “We had to experiment a few things on the car to really understand the direction we were taking, and we have to do the same for next year’s car. So, those races were painful, especially Mexico. I think we were very slow, said the Spaniard.”
Aston Martin Team Principal Mike Krack was also on the same wavelength, adding that the choice to sacrifice certain events was fundamental to learning something for next year: “It’s not about pandering to the outside world , but ourselves. We wanted to learn as much as possible for next year. But obviously then we sacrificed the results a bit. There are a series of parts that you combine together. These cars are very complicated and you have to understand the different areas well, how they interact with each other.”
There is still the belief that some parts of the latest package did not work as expected, so much so that the technicians decided to take a step back by reassembling the old fund. However, this was also part of a program in which, according to Aston Martin, engineers would try extreme experiments to understand how to move on certain elements in view of next year, in particular on the bottom, the most sensitive area of these single-seaters.
![Lance Stroll, Aston Martin AMR23](https://cdn-6.motorsport.com/images/mgl/68yglOx0/s1000/lance-stroll-aston-martin-amr2-1.jpg)
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
Lance Stroll, Aston Martin AMR23
In view of the last two events of the season in Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi, Tom McCullough explained that, as fundamental as this correlation work was, perhaps the choice to do it on the track by sacrificing the races in Austin and Mexico City was not was the best the team could take: “In the next races we will focus on trying to get as many points as possible, rather than carrying out too many research and development projects in front of everyone on the track.
“Obviously in Zandvoort we had a good car, even if it was a bit dependent on the characteristics of the track. We recently debuted some parts to do some experiments, perhaps we did too much research and development in front of all of you on the track during the last two weekend [Stati Uniti e Messico] which, in hindsight, was perhaps a mistake. But we are quite satisfied that we have understood well how to develop the car, which is fundamental for next year. This is crucial data that will help us,” McCullough added.
As for the Austin package, Aston explained that it wanted to test some elements that will come in handy for next year. The new fund, for example, takes up concepts already seen on the cars of other teams: “We wanted to push the limits in some areas of the fund, because these cars are very complicated. We had to adapt to understanding the work in the wind tunnel and the CFD, everyone has had to, see for porposing or how to generate load. We’ve done some extreme experiments to correlate data and to understand why certain things work in a certain way. Now we have that data and that’s part of the correlation process and of development for next year’s car”.
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