Aston Martin to lose F1 aero testing time: can it keep pressure on Red Bull?

F1

Aston Martin's successful start to the 2023 F1 season will see it lose a chunk of aerodynamic testing time, but the team insists it won't hold it back in the race to catch Red Bull, writes Adam Cooper

Fernando-Alonso-on-Canadian-GP-podium

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Aston Martin

This has been a mightily impressive season so far for Fernando Alonso and his Aston Martin team. On pure performance Montreal was perhaps their best race yet relative to pacesetters Red Bull, helped by the latest batch of upgrades.

But can the team continue that momentum and allow Alonso to take on Max Verstappen as the season progresses?

That’s going to be one of the most fascinating aspects of the next few races as we move to a run of “traditional” tracks in Europe after a start to the season dominated by street and temporary venues with kerbs, chicanes and heavy braking events.

An extra twist is that from next week the team loses the edge it has had in terms of the FIA Aero Testing Regulations (ATR).

Lance-Stroll-in-2023-Canadian-Grand-Prix

Aston Martin’s development has been helped by more aero testing time than rivals

Aston Martin

This time last year Aston was eighth in the constructors’ table, which meant that from July to December it was third on the sliding scale of wind tunnel time and usage for that crucial period when work began to ramp up on the 2023 car – and just as incoming technical director Dan Fallows was finding his feet, having joined in April.

At the end of last year the team was seventh, putting it fourth on the list for the January-June ATR period that is just about to end.

While the ATR steps from one position to another are relatively small, when you start counting multiple steps – and specifically the gap between Aston and close rivals Ferrari and Mercedes, not to mention the additionally penalised Red Bull – having such an advantage for a whole year from July 1 2022 to June 30 2023 has been useful indeed.

Aerodynamic testing allowances

Allowances are reset every 6 months and based on teams’ championship position. They apply to a baseline testing allowance set at the equivalent of 160 wind tunnel runs and 1000 CFD simulations per month

Constructors’ position Allowance (% of baseline)
1 70%
2 75%
3 80%
4 85%
5 90%
6 95%
7 100%
8 105%
9 110%
10 115%

 

Aston finished the first half of this season in third place in the constructors’ table. After the upcoming reset it will still have an ATR advantage over Red Bull and Mercedes for the next six months, but it will be less than previously, and Ferrari is now better off. And that could make a difference to the team’s R&D momentum as it works on upgrades for the latter races of the season before switching its full focus to the AMR24.

The Canadian GP was a case of what might have been. The team brought a raft of new upgrades but a rain-affected and disjointed couple of days meant that it was hard to properly judge the impact. Alonso did his usual fine job in the damp qualifying session to earn second, and from there it looked like the Spaniard would be doing all he could to oust poleman Verstappen on the first lap.

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In fact he made a bad start and had to spend the first part of the race finding his way back past Lewis Hamilton, which he eventually did. But as the radio traffic revealed, he was driving with one hand tied behind his back as he chased Verstappen.

What the team later called a “fuel system error” meant that he had to rein in his pace by lifting and coasting, and he made his frustration clear, noting at one point “I want to win this race” after being told once again that he had to back off.

He eventually finished 9.5 seconds behind Verstappen. What could he have done if he hadn’t been trapped behind Hamilton early on, and hadn’t had that fuel saving issue? We don’t know, and to be fair nor do we know how much Verstappen had in hand. Nevertheless it was clear that Aston was genuinely closer to Red Bull than previously.

There was obviously some frustration in the Aston camp afterwards, but to even be thinking about a lost chance to challenge for a victory shows how far the team has come this year.

“Yeah, exactly,” said team boss Mike Krack. “I mean, someone asked me before if it is frustrating, and I think it’s not at all, it’s challenging. Because we have a car with a driver that wants to do that, and we are not far from doing it. So for us it’s always very motivational, and we need to fight hard to close the gap as much as we can for the next races.”

Lewis Hamilton behind Fernando Alonso in 20233 Canadian Grand Prix

Alonso eventually found a way past Hamilton in Canada, but had lost the chance to challenge Verstappen

Aston Martin

Did he think Red Bull was now under some pressure?

“I think I should not make any such statements. Because they are world champions. They are a winning team, we have now a first year where we are a bit better, so I think we need to keep our feet on the ground.”

As noted the disjointed two days of practice and qualifying meant that it was hard to judge the status quo last weekend as everyone added their latest upgrades, while Canada has its own peculiarities that suit some cars and not others.

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“It’s difficult to answer,” said Krack regarding Aston’s true form. “I think always when you put new parts on the car, you have to do a bit of a re-learning loop, how is your car behaving in different conditions, in different ride heights. So I think we have a lot to learn. And we have to also develop the car further over the next races.

“Canada is specific. You will remember that I said in Barcelona that we should always wait a couple of races to identify really where you are. And the mix between updates and contract characteristics, how they come, it makes it really difficult to get a clear picture.

“The safest thing to say at this point is Red Bull is in front, and the other three are close. I think that is what we can say safely. Anything else, I think it’s probably also the shape of the day, how you are that day, or how the circuit is suiting your car, or which tyres you’re having on.”

Alonso has been on the podium at every race bar two this year. The car seemed to be missing some pace in Baku, where he qualified sixth and finished fourth, while at his home race in Barcelona a scrappy qualifying saw him start ninth and finish seventh behind team-mate Lance Stroll. The latter begged the question of whether the car will be as quick on the tracks coming up as it was in the likes of Monaco and Canada?

Lance-Stroll-ahead-of-Fernando-Alonso-in-2023-Spanish-GP

There are questions over Aston’s consistency after sixth- and seventh-place finishes in Spain

Aston Martin

“I’m not concerned because I think we have seen the latest upgrades, which seem to work,” said Krack. “And there are some tracks coming now where you have a lot of high-speed corners. I think we improved our car in high-speed corners, which we have maybe not so many years.

“So actually, we are looking forward to them. Because in such circuits, I think we will see the true strength of the Red Bull. And also we’ll have a better indication of how far we are away.”

The Montreal package, highlighted by revised sidepods, certainly seemed to do what it was supposed to. However Aston technical boss Fallows was keen to downplay the overall significance of that very visual change.

“Physically it’s a very big update,” he said. “But in truth, there are things that we’ve done to the car up to now, which, which are also quite significant.

Aston-Martin-2023-Canadian-GP-sidepod

Spot the difference: Canadian GP sidepod...

Aston-Martin-2023-Spanish-GP-sidepod

...and earlier Spanish GP version

“We are trying to sort of put consistent developments on the car, rather than wait for a few races and then have a big update. I suppose visually it’s the most different; it’s not necessarily the biggest in terms of performance.

“There’s no doubt that the sidepods are essentially flow tuning features, they are things that condition the flow to the rear of the car. But it also helps the floor to work as well. The philosophy that we’ve adopted that is getting wider adoption, across the grid now, is obviously something which helps this sort of concept of floor to work as well.

“Although in itself maybe the actual performance improvements of the bodywork is not so big on its own, it helps everything else to work.”

The bigger picture is the pursuit of the top team: “The gap in performance to Red Bull is still reasonable. But they absolutely are our target, and we’d like to get on the back of them as soon as we can.”

So what about the ATR reset that kicks in on July 1? Fallows denies that the team had to front-load important projects and push them through before the deadline squeezed its tunnel hour allocation.

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“In truth it is not a huge amount per week,” he says of the change. “So we don’t have to fundamentally change the way we work. But certainly, ever since it was obvious that we were going to be a bit further up the pecking order by that time we’ve taken the approach of trying to rethink what we can to modify our approach.

Teams can trade tunnel usage against CFD, and what Aston is likely to do even more now is to use more CFD to, for example, test five new wing profiles, and ensure that perhaps only the best makes it has far as the wind tunnel for further evaluation.

“There is substantially more CFD capability than wind tunnel,” said Fallows. “So you can bias things a little bit more towards that if you want to. It’s a feature of being slightly further up the grid. It’s a nice problem to have, in many ways.”

Intriguingly in the context of the question marks over the car’s performance at upcoming tracks Fallows stressed that the team is actively trying to make it work at all types of venues. It’s not easy to get a handle on a car at temporary circuits, especially when it’s fundamentally changed with new parts every weekend, so the upcoming run of the Red Bull Ring, Silverstone, Spa and the Hungaroring will teach the team – and us – a lot more about the true potential of the AMR23.

2 Fernando Alonso Atson Martin 2023 Azerbaijan GP

Next run of races will help the team to understand more about its car

Aston Martin

“The more sort of traditional tracks with a good variety of corners, they are much easier for us to kind of understand how the car works,” said Fallows. “But our target really is to make a car that can operate in in any circuit, any conditions. In terms of understanding it and tuning it, then those kinds of circuits certainly help.

Austria will be intriguing, and what’s more it’s a sprint weekend, and thus teams only have FP1 in which to hone their set-ups before they are locked in for the weekend.

It’s worth noting that this year Aston has generally arrived with a good car and not needed to make a lot of changes after Friday running, whereas Red Bull in contrast has had some tricky Fridays prior to getting it right on Saturday.

“I’m looking forward for the sprint, because it’s just more action,” says Krack. “I think we normally are in good shape on Friday. I think also because we know the realities about sprint weekends, that you must not try to get last with new parts or any specific tests, and try to use as much as possible the session that you have. And from that moment, it is really about not making any mistakes on a sprint weekend.”

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