Photo: Aston Martin F1 Team / Twitter
Aston Martin were quick to react in the driver market this year following Sebastian Vettel’s retirement announcement. The British outfit quickly snatched Fernando Alonso away from Alpine, which goes to show just how ambitious they are.
Meanwhile, the AMR22 race car has also been improved since earlier in the season. The team acknowledged they had a poor concept and switched things around after the Spanish Grand Prix.
“I think the team has always been very agile. It's been a small race team, and, at its core, there are a few key people making the decisions. It's not a big bureaucratic company,” explained Aston Martin performance exec, Tom McCullough, as quoted by Motorsport.
He then touched on their mid-season concept switch by stating: “As we sat down, we were trying throughout winter testing and the first few races to bring parts to the car to get on top of the porpoising, and to give a bigger operating window to the car.”
“But you get to a point where, even with your development tools, wind tunnel, CFD simulations, and track tests, we weren't making the progress we wanted to make.”
When asked if low-speed performance is an indicator of the potential of the AMR22, McCullough said: “The car actually has been quite performant in the low street corners for quite a while, and we’ve seen that from the analysis compared to other people.”
“Our big focus has been to also improve the car in the high-speed corners, which we have been doing of late. From the Red Bull side of things, their car is very efficient and very fast in a straight line, and we're not as strong as them. But neither is most of the grid.”
It’s clear that there’s a lot of potential with this team, on and off the track. In fact, with six races still to go in the 2022 campaign, we wouldn’t be surprised to see Aston Martin leapfrog both AlphaTauri and Haas in the Constructor Standings.
“I think the team has always been very agile. It's been a small race team, and, at its core, there are a few key people making the decisions. It's not a big bureaucratic company,” explained Aston Martin performance exec, Tom McCullough, as quoted by Motorsport.
He then touched on their mid-season concept switch by stating: “As we sat down, we were trying throughout winter testing and the first few races to bring parts to the car to get on top of the porpoising, and to give a bigger operating window to the car.”
“But you get to a point where, even with your development tools, wind tunnel, CFD simulations, and track tests, we weren't making the progress we wanted to make.”
When asked if low-speed performance is an indicator of the potential of the AMR22, McCullough said: “The car actually has been quite performant in the low street corners for quite a while, and we’ve seen that from the analysis compared to other people.”
“Our big focus has been to also improve the car in the high-speed corners, which we have been doing of late. From the Red Bull side of things, their car is very efficient and very fast in a straight line, and we're not as strong as them. But neither is most of the grid.”
It’s clear that there’s a lot of potential with this team, on and off the track. In fact, with six races still to go in the 2022 campaign, we wouldn’t be surprised to see Aston Martin leapfrog both AlphaTauri and Haas in the Constructor Standings.
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