The Aston Martin AMR23 Formula 1 car has broken cover in the team’s 2023 launch event at Silverstone.
It is the third car of this particular iteration of the famous Aston Martin brand in F1, operated by the team that had begun its life as Jordan back in the early 1990s.
Last year, Aston Martin had gradually recovered from a particularly difficult start to its season to become a prominent midfield force later into the campaign, ultimately only losing sixth place in the constructors’ standings to Alfa Romeo on countback.
This time, Aston Martin says, “the aim is to deliver a car that will be competitive from the outset”.
It has drafted in two-time F1 champion Fernando Alonso as its marquee signing – replacing the retired four-time champion Sebastian Vettel – alongside Lance Stroll, while Alonso’s former McLaren F1 team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne and reigning Formula 2 champion Felipe Drugovich are the 2023 reserves.
“Formula 1, like any other business, is a journey. This will only be our third year in this journey,” said the team’s executive chairman Lawrence Stroll – father of Lance – during the launch.
“I think, like everybody knows, whether it’s Formula 1 or any other business, it takes a little longer than three years – but the plan this year is to make a step, next year make another step, the year after another step, until we’re winning and ultimately fighting for world championships.”
The car presented by Aston Martin is a genuine 2023 design that will be getting its first runout on Wednesday at Silverstone in one of the two 100km ‘filming days’ available to every team.
“I think the fans will appreciate as well that we’ve launched the real car. They’re sometimes disappointed to see just a show car with different stickers,” quipped new signing Alonso.
“This team is just more fair on everything.”
The AMR23 is the first car overseen from its inception by Dan Fallows, the team’s technical director who Aston Martin had recruited from Red Bull.
“I think you can see that the car is very, very different from last year,” said Fallows.
“Around 95% of the car is actually completely different from the AMR22.
“We went into this development phase trying to be bold, trying to be aggressive, trying to take on lessons from last year.
“We did make quite a bit of progress with the AMR22. We wanted to make sure that this is a sensible evolution of that.
“It also gives us a really good platform to develop on, but at the same time to make sure that it was aggressive, that we did give a big challenge to all the engineering teams, make sure they were really pushing themselves.
“And I think you can see that in the design of the car.”
The 2023 season will also mark Aston Martin moving into its new Silverstone factory, although the windtunnel that will be built as part of that investment is only slated to come online the following year.
