Despite a fluctuating second half of the 2023 season, with more shadows than lights, the new year has started with a lot of confidence at Aston Martin. The hope is that the AMR24 proves not only to be a competitive car right from the start, but also that it is able to confirm itself as fast throughout the entire championship, without repeating the development errors seen in the past world championship.
In fact, after a crackling start to the season in which the AMR23 had often proven to be the second force on the grid, the second half of the season had held little satisfaction for the Silverstone team, given the progress of its rivals and the difficulties encountered by the engineers in grow the single-seater.
Speaking before the 2023 Belgian Grand Prix, Mike Krack explained that the team realized they had followed the wrong path in the development phase, but also that it would take time to recover and find the right direction again.
Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin AMR24
Photo by: Aston Martin Racing
The latest technical innovations introduced towards the end of the year had given mixed results: some had worked, while others, although not returning the expected data, had provided useful indications to be fed into the development of the 2024 single-seater. It is no coincidence that some details of the AMR24 fund remember the one tested towards the end of last season.
However, the hope is that those difficulties encountered in 2023 will not recur this year, instead showing constant progress throughout the entire world championship. From this point of view, Alonso is convinced that his team will not repeat the same mistakes, having learned from past experience and having explored this issue in depth during the design phase of the new single-seater.
“I'm confident. If that wasn't the case, maybe I wouldn't have been able to sleep in the last two months! But I think we've done a lot of experiments and a lot of changes in terms of understanding the problems and the direction and paths we need to take this year on the car ”.
A detail of the fund tested and then discarded last year, even if some ideas were useful for the development of the AMR24
“I think we understood a lot of things and with this year's car we intend to improve some of the weak points that we saw in terms of the development of the car last year. We went in the wrong direction a few times and we understood it a little too much late. We hope to be able to rely on what we have learned, last year's difficulties were lessons that we have made our own for the 2024 car”, added the Spaniard
Thinking of repeating the step forward made from 2022 to 2023 is almost unrealistic, given that the starting point for 2022 was often not even a top 10 car, but this does not take away from the fact that the team expects to have made tangible progress in any case some aspects of the single-seater.
“I think that this winter we made a good step forward, perhaps not as big as last year, because last year the starting point was very poor. This year, however, the starting point was already very strong compared to last year.”
It is precisely around this point that the attention of the Silverstone technicians was focused, because in the last championship both Alonso and Stroll had highlighted very clear critical issues. As the season progressed and the competition grew, the AMR23's low top speeds became an increasingly limiting factor. Furthermore, the updates have changed some driving characteristics, making the car more nervous and complicated to drive, an aspect that has penalized the Canadian above all.
Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin AMR24
Photo by: Aston Martin Racing
Both drivers underlined this theme on the sidelines of the presentation of the AMR24, also indicating other areas in which they hope the engineers have managed to make tangible improvements: “I would like to have a little more downforce. Especially in high-speed corners, it was probably a weak area last year, which I think we tried to improve in this year's car,” said Alonso.
“Also, last year the top speeds weren't the best, we were always at the bottom of the table in terms of top speeds. This year we tried to be a little more efficient, a little faster on the straight. They're a couple of points I'd like to see in the car when we get to winter testing in Bahrain, which will probably help us on Sunday race weekends.”
Teammate Lance Stroll is also on the same wavelength: “There were some weak points in the car on some circuits. Some of these weaknesses were exposed and we struggled a lot more as a team. This year, therefore, the whole team has worked very, very hard to continue to build on what we learned last year, improving some weak points and also continuing on the strengths of last year's car.”
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