F1 | Aston goes down, RB goes up: the grid is no longer divided in half

The first events of the season all seemed to have the same aspect in common, namely the fact that the grid was divided into two parts. In the highest area the five reference teams, therefore Red Bull, Ferrari, McLaren, Mercedes and Aston Martin, while fighting outside the top ten were the other five remaining teams.

In particular, Aston Martin had the role of fourth or fifth force depending on the events, but was still clearly ahead of Racing Bulls and Haas, who instead represented the most tangible threat in the chasing group. In the first stages of the championship, the feeling was that to see one of the five midfield teams in the points, a withdrawal by one of the top teams was needed, a bit like what had happened in Saudi Arabia. This situation, also from a future perspective, had also pushed us to consider the possibility of extending the points zone beyond tenth place.

However, in subsequent events the values ​​began to change, in particular when the race for updates came into full swing, making the role of technical innovations central in determining a team’s successes and setbacks. Racing Bulls pushed by first bringing updates to Japan aimed at making the car even more competitive in slow areas. In Miami, however, another substantial package has arrived aimed at adding load from the bottom also in the fast areas, an aspect in which the VCARB01 showed some more difficulties.

Right from the sixth round, Yuki Tsunoda managed to always qualify ahead of the Aston Martins, to which is also added Daniel Ricciardo’s fourth place in the Miami sprint. Although it is true that the British team has encountered some unlucky performances, especially with Alonso, who despite himself was the author of two qualifications in which personal errors and communication errors with the team made the result worse than it could have been, on the other It is also partly true that at Racing Bulls they believe they have definitively hooked Aston.

“I think maybe Aston had a couple of races where they didn’t perform well. We have certainly taken a step, there is no doubt about this. In Miami we saw that the new fund worked very well, probably better than we expected. And this coincided with a less than stellar weekend from Aston. Obviously they also had a difficult weekend in Imola until Sunday,” explained Alan Permane of Racing Bulls.

In fact, although the Silverstone team itself responded with a package of updates at Imola, in reality the technical innovations do not seem to have brought the hoped-for benefits on a competitive level. Both drivers instead complained of an increasing difficulty in driving the car, a theme that actually has its roots already in last season. The early 2023 single-seater, in addition to being fast, was also easy to drive: to keep up with Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren, the team tried to add load, but this also compromised the handling. A path that seems to have been repeated again this year, given the words of the two riders right after the latest updates, with the engineers also appearing to struggle in extracting that additional load seen in the factory.

Although it is true that in Imola, Aston actually managed to precede the Racing Bulls in the race, this was more due to strategic issues than pure performance. Both of the two VCARB01s slipped back at the start which then affected the race tactics, giving Stroll space to stretch and snatch the position towards the end. However, looking at the performances on the flying lap, as well as those in Monaco and the growing difficulties in extracting the most from the package, alarm bells went off in the Silverstone team.

“Looking at the results, we are no longer in the top five,” Alonso admitted in Monaco, stating that the drop in form represents a wake-up call for Aston. A concept also expressed by Stroll, who recognized that the two “Racing Bulls seem to be a little bit faster than us right now, certainly in the last few races. So, we have some work to do.”

On the one hand Racing Bulls believes it has taken a big step forward, on the other Aston Martin has to fight with its weaknesses. The feeling is that, beyond pure performance, the Silverstone team must go back to giving their drivers a car that is simple to drive, which gives confidence, as demonstrated by the mistakes made by those who sit in the cockpit in recent events. With a single-seater more at the limit, realistically there will be even more mistakes and, given that a few tenths can weigh on several boxes on the starting grid, giving the right confidence is a fundamental step.

Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin AMR24

Photo by: Erik Junius

In the challenge between the two teams, the truth probably lies somewhere in the middle. Undoubtedly Alonso’s errors in the last two qualifying sessions weighed on the final result of the AMR24, but it is also true that the Imola track, like that of Monte Carlo, do not represent two fortresses for the British single-seater, which makes faster corners and greater delta between closed and open DRS the strengths to stay ahead of the Faenza team. However, Miami, as well as the performances in recent events, have shown that Racing Bulls has come considerably closer, breaking that wall that divided the grid into two parts.

For Yuki Tsunoda, in fact, the progress of the Faenza team is evident, but there is still a step left to remain consistently ahead of Aston Martin even on less favorable circuits, given that the VCARB01 makes competitiveness in slow corners one of its characteristic elements. “If we see the last two races, we are a little bit ahead of Aston, which we are starting to catch up with. So I think we are in good shape, we have good pace. I think in the next races there will be a lot of developments, so I hope these updates give us a little more pace”, added the Japanese. As confirmed by Permane, in fact, Racing Bulls should also bring some small news to Canada and Spain.