Aston Martin knew from the start in last year’s talks that cutting off some of the floor would hurt the most low-rake cars and suggested other solutions.
The Formula 1 teams voted seven to three to switch floors.
Ahead of this year’s championship, Formula 1 teams voted to make some changes to the cars to reduce downforce, with the intention of continuing last year’s Pirelli tires for a third season.
However, Pirelli later changed its tire construction by bringing out more durable tires for the 2021 season, effectively negating the reasons for the reduction in downforce.
However, the downforce rules, which included cutting off part of the ground just in front of the rear tires, were already set in stone.
Aston Martin and Mercedes, the two low-rake teams in Formula 1, were injured the most.
Aston Martin CEO Otmar Szafnauer said he knew this had happened and suggested alternative solutions to reduce downforce.
“Yes, we did,” he told the media when asked if he had objected to the 2021 rule changes.
“We objected because they are actually cheaper for high-rake cars, and we objected to them and then proposed other regulations that would be more equivalent.
“The vote in the Technical Advisory Board is only indicative and was seven to three at the time.
“Three teams voted against the Technical Working Group, but the Technical Working Group was an indicative vote. The technical working group has no voting rights anyway.
“It was just a hint, but then it was done anyway for security reasons. This is just an illustration. “
He added: “There were other proposals that were not proposed by us but were made early on, and I’ll give you the example of a rear wing size reduction that would have affected every body equally, but that was not chosen.
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According to Szafnauer, this year’s results for both Aston Martin and Mercedes are proof that the low-rake cars suffer the most.
“We have the ability to internally have both CFD and tunneling experience to look at the changes and determine whether they are more damaging to one philosophy than the other. That is exactly what we addressed last August, and we did I think we’ve proven right, ”he said.
“And statistically not to show that if you just look at the last race without the pit stops for Mercedes, Lewis was 34 seconds ahead of Max at last year’s Portimao and the pit stops didn’t have the end to try to get the fastest lap . I think it was four seconds this year.
“So you lost 30 seconds to a Red Bull in a race. And so do we. If you look at our times when we finished, we were also about 30 seconds behind where we were last year. Just look at the first three races. See both qualification and race results. “
Aston Martin continues to speak to the FIA about a possible solution, or at least an understanding of how a rule change came about that affects one vehicle philosophy so much more than the other.
“We had good conversations with the FIA to understand the process and how we got to where we were,” he said. “The discussions are almost over. I think we made good progress to understand what happened. “
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