F1 rivals envious of Aston Martin upgrade gains

The step Aston Martin has made with its overhauled Formula 1 car has been “eye-opening” for its rivals who can “only dream” of making such a big performance gain.

Aston Martin has delivered a huge upgrade to its ill-born AMR26 at the Hungarian Grand Prix, which showed “promising” signs on Friday and got Fernando Alonso out of grand prix Q1 for the first time this season.

It’s also been a huge wake-up call for rival teams.

Cadillac’s Valtteri Bottas admitted to being “a bit scared” that Aston Martin’s upgrade would leave it as the slowest team, having done well to pull away from Aston Martin in recent rounds.

He’d heard rumours of a two-second improvement from Aston Martin’s Hungaroring upgrade and Bottas reckoned, after qualifying 21st, over seven tenths off Alonso in Q1, that “I don't think [Aston Martin's upgrade] is far off" the rumoured gain.

Team-mate Sergio Perez isn’t sure his car was put back together completely right after the issue that forced him to stop in FP3, which might necessitate a pitlane start. So Perez being 1.2s off Alonso can’t be taken as fully representative, but Cadillac has clearly been leapfrogged in Hungary.

But it wasn't the only one convincingly beaten by Alonso’s Aston Martin, as the faster Williams - of Carlos Sainz - was half a second slower.

Sainz expected the Hungaroring to be Williams’s “worst track of the season”, but he was still impressed by the margin Aston Martin has pulled ahead by.

He hopes Williams will take the Aston Martin step forward as motivation to do the same, rather than be beaten down by the disappointment of being surpassed by it.

But team-mate Alex Albon called it “eye-opening” - as he is convinced it’s the kind of step Williams won’t be able to replicate with its own upcoming major upgrade at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix in September.

“I don't know what kind of upgrade that Aston had, but I could only dream of that,” Albon said.

“We could only dream of an upgrade like that, - was it net, possibly, the gain, one and a half, two seconds? I mean, fair play to them.

“We're going to be fighting with them in some races purely because of the straightline speed, but I can tell you in the corners they're considerably faster than us.

“It's eye-opening because, also for us, we know what our Baku upgrade is. It's not that. So we have work to do.”

Alonso also beat the second Haas of Ollie Bearman, who was knocked out of Q1 for the first time since Monaco. Even if Aston Martin used three sets of softs to Bearman's two, he admitted it's "really painful" to be fighting with and losing to the AMR26.

"It shows that we're really fighting and struggling at the moment,” Bearman said.

He'd had to sit out FP1 so Ryo Hirakawa could drive and in FP2 he struggled with a “really poor through-corner balance” that put him on the back foot.

Team-mate Esteban Ocon called Aston Martin’s upgrade “quite impressive” and admitted “they are a threat”.

More to come

Alonso was pleased the upgrade had delivered what the team expected, without any “nasty surprise”.

He added: “We're still not on top of the package. Now in qualifying we again relearn something on the balance of the car so if we have another session I think we will change the set-up again and we go with a different set-up - so I think it's still early days.

“There is more potential to unlock in the car but, you know, it's normal when you have such a big package, and unfortunately we lost one car [Lance Stroll] yesterday on the free practice as well so we're still down on experience in this part.”

He said the car was “a little bit more forgiving so it's a little bit easier to drive” and a little bit more consistent from corner to corner.

“This package, obviously it didn't change many positions but it changed a lot,” Alonso added.

“The momentum of everyone in the factory's not anymore that we are chasing something that we don't know.

“We know exactly what we are looking for and we know exactly the targets for the next package or the target for next year so that's, I think, for me the biggest change of this weekend.”

As well as optimising this major upgrade, Aston Martin has another chassis upgrade planned for the first race after the summer break, at Zandvoort, which will coincide with Honda’s sole engine upgrade.

The team will then bring another chassis upgrade to Baku one month later.

An important caveat

Lance Stroll was knocked out of Q1 in 20th and half a second down on Alonso, having missed vital track time on Friday to the suspension failure in FP1.

He felt Q2 was possible without a tailwind at Turn 12 that meant “the car just didn’t turn”. He was around a tenth and a half down on Alonso before then, so he’d have had to find a big improvement in the final corners.

Stroll said: “I think we're missing a lot on engine. We're definitely much better on grip levels, so we just need to find more power.”

Therein lies the caveat laid down by a few other drivers, including Bearman, who said: “It's probably the track that's suits them the most with the shortest straights. I don't think it will remain like that, let's say, forever, but it's a reminder for us that we need to up our game.”

Bottas said: “This is probably one of their better tracks. I still think on tracks with longer straights they might be in trouble, but at least here in the case now we are at the back, but not by a big margin. This time it's Williams that is really close to us.”

That does mean it’s important Aston Martin’s second chassis upgrade adds further performance and Honda’s engine upgrade delivers.

But there’s no doubt it’s already delivered an upgrade many others in the midfield are envious of.