For Aston Martin, the Formula 1 test week in Barcelona came to a sobering end. After Sebastian Vettel’s car caught fire due to an oil leak a few minutes before the lunch break, the team’s working day came to an early end. Lance Stroll was not able to participate again in the afternoon as planned.
“Day three was disrupted by a small oil spill that started a small fire,” says performance director Tom McCullough. “While this was efficiently brought under control, it unfortunately ended our test prematurely and prevented us from trying the new 18-inch tires in the wet.”
Because of this, Aston Martin missed the planned rain test when the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya was artificially watered in the afternoon.
But on Friday the team was one of four racing teams that were no longer able to go out on the track in the afternoon. With 48 laps, Sebastian Vettel stayed in fifth place in the daily standings and is nevertheless quite satisfied with his test week.
“They’ve been useful days and we’ve learned a lot about the AMR22, although like all teams we still have a lot more to learn considering it’s a brand new generation of Formula 1,” says Vettel, the completed a total of 174 laps over the three days – the ninth most of all drivers.
Drivers are positive
His teammate Lance Stroll only managed 122 laps due to the canceled afternoon, which means 15th place in this ranking. “It was a shame that we couldn’t do a single lap in the afternoon, but it was still great to be back at the wheel of a Formula 1 car,” said the Canadian.
“We learned a lot about the AMR22. That’s important because the cars are completely different this year,” he continues. “It’s a whole new philosophy that we need to understand, so we’re working on how to set up and drive these cars. We’re on a steep learning curve and we want to make further progress in Bahrain.”
First impressions of the new car are positive for Sebastian Vettel, who ended the week seventh fastest overall, 0.686s slower than points leader Lewis Hamilton. “It was a pity that we had the problem at the end, but we did a lot of laps and can therefore be satisfied with our work this week,” he says.
Aston Martin drives almost 300 laps
For the statistics: Aston Martin totaled 296 laps or almost 1,400 kilometers on all three days, which is seventh. For comparison: Ferrari did 439 laps and thus more than 2,000 kilometers.
“The first two days of testing were pretty productive,” McCullough says. “Sebastian’s problem aside, we’ve run a useful program and with the many laps we can now continue to learn as much as we can about the AMR22.”
“We will now go back to Silverstone, work our way through the data and then want to experience a productive test in Bahrain.”