Andrew Green, Aston Martin’s chief technical officer, says the team’s decision to effectively “clone” the masterful 2019 Mercedes as the basis for its 2020 and 21 series cars “opened our eyes” to factors that make this year Will make challengers stronger.
The then “Pink Mercedes” had a successful 2020 season in which it was the third fastest car on average, finished fourth in the constructors’ championship and won a race under the name Racing Point.
But in 2021, the need to get the car due to the COVID-19 pandemic and the small but significant changes to the aerodynamic rule that hit the low-rake cars the hardest led to a difficult season with Aston Martin in seventh Place fell back championship.
By spending two years designing, developing and driving a car that was initially as close to Mercedes design as possible – albeit without access to design details – Green believed he was broadening the team’s horizons.
“It definitely opened our eyes to new ways of working – new concepts, new ideas,” Green told The Race.
“And it has made it possible for this thinking to be implemented to a certain extent with the 21-inch car, but definitely with the 2022 car.”
The approach of “copying” – a word Green argues is incorrect – a title-winning car has the team defined in a certain way of development. In a 2020 interview with Gary Anderson of The Race, Green stated that at this stage the team must be careful not to stray from the Mercedes path, as the priority is to understand and refine their clone.
There are two broad schools of thought about the implications. For one thing, by following another team’s path, you risk weakening your own technical skills, and for another, Green argues – that it has significantly expanded the team’s knowledge base.
It took a lot of work for the former Jordan team to make this copy. When the legality of the car was questioned, only the brake channels were found to be problematic as a result of the switch from an unlisted to a listed part while the car was in use.
You can argue for both arguments and the 2022 car will be the acid test of whether the decision to emulate Mercedes design was a good or a bad one. However, Green emphasizes that the team learned from the process rather than blindly following it.
“We looked at the car and found out why this car was significantly faster than everyone else,” says Green. “We did our own learning. There is no shortcut for it.
“It’s not a copy, it’s developing a solution that gives you a rough idea of what the answer you think is, but you have yet to get there and it takes a lot of development and work to understand.
“In a way, it’s even more difficult because sometimes the directions lead you away from what you think is the right answer. I think the team did a great job understanding the philosophy behind it.
“If you look up and down on the grid, many other teams have followed the same philosophy. They did what we did last year and they made the fastest car philosophy their own.
“It’s not a new concept, everyone just stuck to it because I think we did a good job and other teams were a little upset that we did a good job.”
Aston Martin deviated more from Mercedes out of necessity in 2021, although he could take the 2020 transmission and rear suspension as a “free” upgrade with no symbolic expenses. Instead, it issued its tokens for the monocoque.
With his primary focus on car design in 2022, however, he was unable to keep up with the pace of development of the front-runner Mercedes and survived a difficult season.
“In the limited development time, which was actually quite short, it moved as far away as we could in the time available and the reason for this was the change in the aerodynamics regulations introduced over the winter. “Says green.
“That was why we had to move because it was a pretty dramatic change and a significant change in the car’s performance.
“We were required to do this because updating the car, like the regulation update, took massive damage and it took a significant amount of resources and development just to get back to what was way behind the car. We suffered quite a lot. “
Did you miss our previous article...
https://formulaone.news/aston-martin/big-loss-or-necessary-jolt-our-verdict-on-astons-big-f1-departure
