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Of the teams that made a poor initial go of the new ground effect rules that Formula 1 adopted in 2022, Aston Martin was certainly one that far more had been expected of than a lacklustre beginning blighted by porpoising and bouncing.
But the acquisition of engineering talent and the team’s expansion that might have prompted expectations of a brighter start instead explained its sluggish start – because they coincided with such a big rules overhaul.
That’s certainly a mitigating factor – and one Aston Martin’s admitted did contribute to its difficulties, even though the team thought deciding on the wrong initial concept hamstrung it harder.
In any case, such excuses won’t hold water in 2023.
With an AMR23, which will be revealed on Monday, that’s been overseen by technical director Dan Fallows from inception following his move from Red Bull during 2022, and aerodynamicist Eric Blandin now installed as Fallows’s deputy after leaving Mercedes, Aston Martin really needs to start to return on the investment Lawrence Stroll has been pouring in.
So said Mark Hughes on a recent episode of The Race F1 Podcast of the biggest improvement Aston Martin should be making in 2023.
“They’ve got a big challenge,” said Hughes.
“I’d summarise it as ensuring the whole is as big as the sum of the parts because they’ve had all this big investment by Lawrence Stroll, they’ve now got this high-profile talent they’ve recruited from Mercedes, they’ve recruited from Red Bull, they’ve got Eric Blandin there as a deputy technical director from Mercedes.
“They didn’t have a big input on last year’s car and also the simulation tools led them astray with what the requirements were going to be for the new generation of ground effect Formula 1 car. So that needs to be way better too and I’m sure that’s something that they’ve been addressing.
“But this is a big season for Aston Martin, because you could sort of reason away why it had such a disappointing season last year, it was that the new formula came along at just the moment that they were transitioning from being a small team to a pretty big team and all the reorganisation and recruitment and putting people together that hadn’t worked together before that entails.
“But they’ve had a year now to be working together and to understand where the limitations were and they have all this resource – it’s a very well-funded team, they’ve got a lot of good people there.”
The 2023 season therefore marks what Hughes described as a “really big test” for Aston Martin – one that, should it fail, will have its owner concerned.
“If it doesn’t produce something which is as big as the sum of its parts, then it gets really difficult because then Lawrence Stroll is going to be asking some very awkward questions,” he added.
Podcast host Edd Straw felt the scale of the changes Aston Martin is undergoing meant the team might be permitted to afford itself a more generous timeframe, but he said it has no excuse not to beat the seventh place in the end-of-season constructors’ championship standings it has occupied in three of the four full seasons the team has been under Stroll’s control.
“This transition from being an overachieving smaller team to a bigger team is a difficult one because you have to take a few steps back to move those more steps forward in the long-term; they’re moving to their new factory this year, they’ve got Fernando Alonso there as well as a great barometer of what the car can do,” said Straw.
“It’s hard to actually say where they should be at points along the way, but there is a point in a few years’ time when they’ve got into the new factory, when the new windtunnel which is going to come online on 2024 is up and running, where that transition period is over.
“It’s hard to say what they should be doing – but they really need to be a sharper midfield operation, they at least need to be sixth-best this year. I think that’s the minimum acceptable level for that team.”
Ben Anderson highlighted the size of the task Aston Martin is having to undertake as it attempts to become a force in F1, a comprehensive and complicated process that he acknowledged was “such a tough thing to go through”, but agreed it was not an undertaking that Aston Martin can take its time over.
“It’s such a tough process when you’re changing so many parts all at once in a staggered way, and you have to do that if you have big ambitions,” he said.
“But it’s difficult meshing all those egos together, different ways of working, coming up with the best one while transitioning to new facilities, while trying to make sure you’re developing and adding performance to the short-term – this year’s or next year’s car – trying to step up the grid, a new driver coming in, a very demanding personality; another unknown thrown into the mix.
“There’s a lot of pressure there – such a tough thing to go through – and big expectations as well.
“So it’s not like you can just have a relaxed, five-year run at it and just let everybody kind of feel their way. The demand is there; Lawrence Stroll is not going to be waiting forever.”
