According to Aston Martin’s performance director Tom McCullough, significantly improved efficiency will be the main focus when it comes to the new Formula 1 car for 2024. Because that is a weakness of the current AMR23, which for this reason did not work in Monza and resulted in Aston Martin’s weakest result of the season.
Therefore, Fernando Alonso also asked the team to place an increased focus on the issue of efficiency: “Fernando mentioned the efficiency of the car,” confirms McCullough. “This is an area where we were definitely one of the slower cars on the straights at the start of the year.”
“We worked on it with the base car and also with the rear wings, which we [in Monza] brought with you. This is an area where we need to continue to improve for next year, that’s clear,” he says.
Probably no more big changes at Aston Martin
However, there will hardly be any changes that will benefit the current car. Because with Las Vegas there is only one race left on the schedule where efficiency will be as important as in Spa and Monza.
“There are many elements that contribute to the efficiency of the car,” says McCullough. “And from now until the end of the season, most tracks will not be the most efficient tracks and our focus is really on the AMR24, making sure we work as efficiently as possible and more efficiently than when developing the car are this year’s car.”
McCullough admits that Monza showed how difficult it is to find the right compromise between downforce and top speed with current cars: “You can adjust the rear wing so that you are fast in high-speed corners with little grip,” he says. “This is very important because the second Lesmo, Ascari and Parabolica have very long straights.”
“So you always trade the speed in these corners for the drivability and the speed on the straights,” he says. “Especially in qualifying, there is a slow corner in the first sector and a lot of straights or sections that are just full throttle.”
“I think this generation of cars and the characteristics of the cars have led to a slightly different philosophy on the rear wings.”