(Motorsports news) With an emphasis on the floor, Aston Martin has been successfully reverse engineering parts intended for the upcoming year and fitting them to the current AMR23 in recent months. However, in the midst of a slide in results for a team that finished on the podium in six of the first eight races, it divided drivers Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll between the old and new floor specifications in order to carry out back-to-back testing in the real world.
These tests took place during the recent weekends of the United States and Mexican Grands Prix. Before cherry-picking parts for the most recent Brazilian Grand Prix, where Fernando Alonso defeated Sergio Perez to reclaim third place, Aston only managed to accumulate six points during those rounds. The two-time winner Alonso acknowledges that going through those “experiments” was “painful”.
“To truly understand the direction that Aston Martin was going, we had to experiment a little bit on a few things on the car, and we have to go for next year’s car as well,” he stated. “Well, those races, especially the Mexican one, were agonizing. As a team, I believe we moved pretty slowly.” Performance director of Aston Martin Tom McCullough now admits that the team made a mistake by conducting so much research and development in public ahead of the last two rounds of the season in Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi.
“These next few races, we’re really just focused on trying to get as many points as we can,” he stated. “We’re not really doing too many R&D projects in front of you all at the track.” “For the upcoming year, we really tried to undertake some extensive testing and understanding, which we have completed and have all that data in the bank. “Doing all the R&D is difficult, especially in a sprint race like Austin, where there is only one free practice session before parc ferme kicks in.
We would prefer not to start from the pits in order to alter the car’s specifications. “But we’re pretty happy that we’ve got a good understanding of the way to develop the car, which is key for next year.”
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