Aston ‘scratches’ performance after tough start in F1 2021

After a difficult start to the year, the former Racing Point team showed a significantly improved form in Monaco, where Sebastian Vettel was fifth and Lance Stroll eighth.

The team lost much of the momentum it had built at the end of last season with the changes to aerodynamic rules introduced for this year.

The car has been updated regularly, including further ground revisions for Monaco, where Vettel posted his best qualifying position to date and his best race result of the year.

A double score thanks to strong strategies with which both drivers were included in the ranking helped the team to advance from seventh to fifth place in the constructors’ championship.

“It was very commendable,” Stroll told Motorsport.com. “A great weekend for both cars. The pace was there, the strategy was there, a well executed plan.”

“We had a difficult start to the season, we had a bad hand with the rule changes and we cut the floor, which really hurt the low-rake cars. We and Mercedes both lost almost a second per lap against our rivals.

“So we try to work our way back and never give up, and we keep putting parts in the car to try to get back to where we should be.

“I don’t think we can go back to last year’s performance because then we would obviously have to give up the focus on the 22-series car. It’s a good balance. But we will fight to the end. “

Lance Stroll, Aston Martin AMR21

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Stroll said the drop in performance at the beginning of the season did not have a negative impact on the widely publicized change to the Aston Martin name.

“I don’t think it affected the rebranding and that excitement,” he said. “That was phenomenal. We see it through the commitment of the fans.”

“But it’s disappointing when you put in all the hard work and cars are frozen from a homologation point of view. Then you come to the first race and notice that from a homologation point of view, they are not really frozen.

“Again, based on what everyone knows, the cut in the ground that really hurt the low-rake cars. This is of course very frustrating. “

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According to Stroll, the team has ditched the controversy over the origins of the aero rule changes and is instead focusing on providing new updates for 2021.

Aston Martin introduced an updated floor throughout the season and redesigned the side pods to accommodate the rule changes made earlier in the year.

“We left that behind,” added Stroll. “We’re just working to scrape back as much as possible.

“We still have a few things to do. I don’t know exactly how much, to be honest. We certainly haven’t finished getting anything to the car, but it clearly can’t take too long.”