Aston Martin CEO Otmar Szafnauer says the team will not come to terms with an uncompetitive season after its disappointing start to 2021 in Bahrain.
The team that won the penultimate race last year as Racing Point, left the first race of the new season with a single point.
Like its predecessor, the AMR01 shares the “Low Rake” design philosophy, which is also used by Mercedes and which supplies the team with the drive, transmission and other parts. The pair have suffered more from off-season rear body regulation changes than their high-rake car competitors.
However, Szafnauer insists that “more is coming from their car” and says they “haven’t given up this year”.
“We found things in the [wind] Tunnels and in CFD, ”he explained,“ so we’ll get them out on the track soon. It is just a matter of reclaiming the deficit that the FIA has placed on us through their safety-based regulatory change.
“By talking to a few other teams, they seem to have made up the entire deficit, and we haven’t. And that’s just because of the different aero philosophy that we pursue. We will work hard to achieve this in the next few races. “
“The changes were all made to the back of the floor around the tire area so we need to look for more downforce there,” he added. “So it will be the rear downforce that we want to improve. And with that comes a better balance between being able to dial in more front wings and the whole thing just takes off. “
Szafnauer admitted that the team had a “rude awakening” after qualifying in Bahrain. “After analyzing the data, we found that the low-rake cars were significantly more hindered by the change in regulations.”
There is no easy solution to their loss of performance, he believes. “[For] For the first time in my 24 years in the sport, we had to homologate the chassis due to the Covid regulations. You can only change it if you’ve actually used yours [development] Token on suspension. Even if we wanted to drive a rear ride height of 150 mm, we cannot do that. “
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F1 season 2021
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