F1 | Aston: a step back to “return to normality”

The last few months have not been particularly easy for Aston Martin. After starting the world championship in which it had been firmly established as the fifth force, fighting on certain occasions even to precede Mercedes, the British team has not been able to keep up with its rivals in terms of updates, thus dropping into the mid-group area, where it has been “absorbed” by other teams.

Before the trio of high-speed tracks, in fact, Racing Bulls had the feeling of having placed themselves as the fifth best team in terms of performance, surpassing Aston Martin. However, the tracks with many fast corners put VCARB01 in crisis, leaving room for other opponents, such as Alpine and, above all, Haas, with the latter capable of achieving two consecutive sixth places that relaunched it in the constructors’ standings.

To further complicate matters, the drivers felt that the package introduced in Emilia-Romagna had made the AMR24 even more difficult to drive, to the limit, in the search for the missing aerodynamic load. As happened last year, in the search for better performance, the team worked hard on the aerodynamics, but this affected the balance, so much so that at the end of the year it was forced to take a step back on some elements.

As a result, Aston Martin managed to score points in only two of the next five races, with a double points finish in Canada in variable conditions where elements such as the AMR24’s ability to prepare the tyres well and make the most of an efficient DRS proved crucial. A result that was repeated at Silverstone, just metres from the factory, although the British top 10 had a different flavour to previous ones.

In fact, although the seventh and eighth place came in a race conditioned by variable weather conditions, in reality the AMR24 performed well throughout the weekend. The low temperatures that were found throughout the weekend helped, precisely because of this typical characteristic of the single-seater, but the hope is that it is not a flash in the pan, but rather a starting point to return to growth. It is no mystery that Aston Martin has had too many inconsistent performances over the last year and a half, thanks to the errors in choosing the direction of development.

Updates haven’t always delivered what was hoped for

“We’ve done a lot of testing over the last 12 months, exploring aerodynamically. Every update we’ve made hasn’t delivered the benefits we were hoping for over the last year. I think we’ve learned a lot and now we’re just trying to fix that and make the car a lot quicker,” explained Lance Stroll, admitting the problems encountered, but also stressing that the hope is that they’ve started down a different path.

In fact, despite so many new packages, in reality the effects did not always go in the direction hoped for. The Suzuka package, especially on the Japanese track, seemed to have given a bit of life back to the AMR24, but already from Imola, where a substantial package of new features had been introduced, including a large revision of the floor, the situation was reversed again. The car immediately proved more difficult to drive, as admitted by the drivers, and the performance did not reach the hoped-for results.

Aston Martin AMR24 Front Wing Comparison

It should come as no surprise, then, that before arriving in Great Britain, there was not exactly a climate of great optimism, so much so that Alonso himself had already announced in Austria that the team’s home race would probably not provide much satisfaction. However, once they arrived at Silverstone, the team seemed to have understood something more about how to manage and extract something more from the AMR24. Lance Stroll in fact finished in seventh place, with sixth not so far behind, although partly favored by the strategic choice of switching to the medium in the final stint against Hulkenberg’s soft, while Alonso finished immediately behind his teammate.

At Silverstone the team introduced a new front wing, with the central part of the mainplane more pronounced and closer to the track, and reworked the aerodynamics around the rear brake ducts. However, other elements have also made a difference, with Alonso suggesting that the AMR24 now seems to have returned to its natural position compared to the Barcelona and Red Bull Ring stages: “It went quite well, the feeling is of being back to normal. We were the fifth or sixth fastest team. Hulkenberg I think was very quick all weekend, but we were fighting for points.”

“Seventh and eighth are more or less where we were before Imola. We’re back to our most natural position, so I’m happy. After Austria we reorganised ourselves a bit, we understood a couple of things that maybe weren’t right in the way we were managing the car. As I said, we’re happy to be back in the points, we felt more competitive,” said the Spaniard.

A step back to take a step forward

Driving-wise, there were no big differences for Alonso at Silverstone, but the car seems to have found more grip: “I think we have more grip now. The driving is more or less the same, but we just go faster. It’s a combination of factors. The new things we brought here helped, but the car in general behaves better. On Friday we tried the new front wing and it worked. In Austria and Barcelona we took two steps back, here instead we have sorted the car a bit,” explained the Spaniard.

Lance Stroll, Aston Martin AMR24

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

The most interesting aspect is that, as admitted during the post-race interviews by the Aston Team Principal himself, on some elements a step back was made in terms of specification, such as the floor: “We tried the new front wing and the new brake ducts. Then we looked at what we had among the available parts to understand what would fit better. It often happens that you change specifications, you don’t always use the same floor everywhere”, explained Mike Krack when asked about the return to the old floor specification.

“Certain tracks also have different characteristics, with many fast corners and also slow corners. Even the peculiarities of the surface, of how the flow is managed, change. Other teams also return to old specifications”.

Now we need to confirm the progress

For Belgium and Hungary, Aston Martin will continue to bring innovations, both to improve performance and to adapt to the specific characteristics that the respective tracks require. Alonso hopes that the team can continue to progress, but it is clear that this growth must be confirmed race after race.

“We have to prove it; we don’t have to talk, but we have to get results. We have introduced many new parts and some work, some don’t. We hope that in Hungary there will be a positive surprise,” said the Spaniard.

Team principal Mike Krack was careful not to draw too many conclusions from the race result, noting the clear discrepancy between the warm temperatures of Austria and the cool, damp conditions of Silverstone, where the AMR24 tends to be more comfortable: “We have to analyse first, because it was not a normal race, given that there was also some rain. We have to take a look. The standings are better than the previous two, we don’t have to be blind to see that, but we have to analyse whether the performance is better. We have to see what the effect is of the new parts and then decide how to move forward.”

“I think we have to be careful when comparing these races. We were in Austria, with a track temperature of 50-60 degrees, with very soft tyres, with a range of speeds between very fast corners and slow corners. Instead in Silverstone it was very cold and we used the harder tyres. We have to understand thoroughly.”