Aston Martin’s prospective Formula 1 season in 2021 took a nosedive in 2020 as the FIA pushed ahead with lowering the regulatory floor for that year.
How disproportionately this would affect low-rake cars (e.g. Mercedes and Aston Martin) was only pointed out by the team’s technical director, Andy Green.
The low-rake Racing Point, as a facsimile of last year’s Mercedes, was a hard-fought car in 2020. Its adapted successor, the Aston Martin AMR21, wasn’t.
The team dropped from third fastest in the performance league table to seventh without the resources or experience of the concept to achieve the same rebound from the regulatory change as Mercedes.
It qualified, on average, about 1 second behind Mercedes pace, but more critically, more than 0.5 seconds behind rivals like Ferrari, McLaren and AlphaTauri, which dumped it on the grid.
From a competition law perspective, it was an unfortunate start for Sebastian Vettel. But the team thinks it has benefited tremendously from its presence to build its structure for the future.
The car’s biggest losses from the ground cut and regulation restrictions around the rear of the car were in high-speed turns.
As a result, the car would look the least bad on any track that places more emphasis on slow corners – and Vettel’s best performances were achieved by Vettel in Monaco, Azerbaijan and Hungary, where he finished fifth, second and second – despite being disqualified at the Hungaroring was because there wasn’t enough fuel in the tank in the end to give a sample.
Without a delay in the pit stop, he would have probably undercut Esteban Ocon that day and crossed the finish line as the winner. Maybe it was a good thing that he didn’t, because losing a win would certainly do more harm than a second place.
Lance Stroll took a best-of-sixth in Qatar. Most of the time, they hovered around the point cut-off as they usually qualified in the lower Q2 portion of the grid.
The car was able to use the rear suspension of the 2020 Mercedes with no token issues, and that at least helped regain some aerodynamics, as did the token issues on the front of the chassis to open up a better airflow path around the radiators. But not enough to compensate for the losses from the regime change.
“We lost between 1.5 and 2 seconds,” claims Green, “and we only got about half of that back.”
This was one of the few cars on the grid that typically qualified more slowly than its predecessor. By using generally higher rear wing levels to compensate for the downforce reduction from the underbody, the car tended to be quite slow on the straights as well.
“We had a tail that was effectively homologated,” says Green.
“We couldn’t lift the car, we were practically locked in, but all of our simulations and all of our analysis said we just have to pick up the car again and get it out of this region.
“We were tied to a solution because we were effectively forced to move forward through 2022.
“If we had had another season of these regulations, I am more than confident that we would have worked our way out and got more performance back.” The last aero upgrade was in June at Paul Ricard’s car.
Even when compared to the teams around him, ’22 has been a focus of Aston Martin from the start, and in that respect Green is optimistic about the future. He calls Vettel an essential part of the development of the team.
“It’s been a real eye opener for us and it’s a great way of working that we’ve adopted.
“He brought a lot of experience to the team and professionalism in the way we work, not only on the track, but also in the factory.
“He just shows us how to proceed and how to do everything right.
“The level of detail you have to get in each area to win races and championships is incredible and I think that showed us how much work it takes to tick each box. Then, to get it right, go through all of the scenarios, including all of the what-if scenarios, and make sure that all of these areas are checked.
“So it’s not just about the absolute current focus, but about all external environments, all strategy scenarios, tire scenarios that ensure that all of these are also covered. So if they happen on a racing weekend, you have a plan.
“We are definitely taking the opportunity to learn and make ourselves a better team. So when we come out of it and get back on track, we really believe we will come out as a better team.”
