Aston Martin confirms a significant upgrade package for the AMR23 in COTA, designed to re-discover their early-season performance.
Dan Fallows, Aston Martin’s technical director, was credited for the team’s resurgence over winter. After switching concepts at last year’s Spanish GP, the British outfit committed itself to following a new direction and adjusting its trajectory.
This decision paid off, as they jumped from a midfield team to regular podium finishers in early 2023. Fernando Alonso was consistently the closest challenger to Red Bull when the season began.
However, this season has turned into a reminder that rising to the top is one thing – but staying there is another. If Aston Martin is to become an established F1 contender, they must find solutions to their quite disastrous mid-season development.
Crucial upgrades in America
This weekend in America will be a big indication of their progress in this area. The Silverstone-based team will bring upgrades to the AMR23 in COTA, as Dan Fallows explains:
“COTA is a challenging circuit where we’ll continue to learn about the AMR23.
“We have some updates coming into the weekend, and we’re quite interested to see how they work.
“In some ways its a shame that it’s a Sprint weekend because we’d like to have more time to dial in those updates and see how the cars will perform.
“It will be a big challenge to gain that understanding as early as possible.
“We’re looking forward to seeing how these upgrades perform and, hopefully, it’s a track where we should be reasonably competitive if we can get everything right.”
A window of opportunity
As we learned at the Canadian GP, updates are not guaranteed to bring performance. This reality has probably cost Aston Martin the opportunity to finish top 3 in the standings. Despite this, Aston cannot be completely written off.
Their mid-season slump is regrettable, but the final stretch of 2023 represents an opportunity. Dan Fallows and his technical team can prove that their post-Canada hiccups were just momentary slumps.
If, as Fallows claims, they have indeed learned from their mistakes, their development for 2024 will also benefit. This is perhaps the most crucial angle to approach the final five rounds of the season. The above comments are also significant because Aston Martin has rarely been so direct about finding lap time since the summer break.
Much like Mercedes, Lawrence Stroll’s team are using the end of the year to prepare for next season. Given that regulations will remain relatively constant in 2024, anything learned now will surely be applicable later. Therefore, Aston Martin needs these updates to work to give them confidence in their winter development.
As mentioned by their technical director, the Sprint weekend format will make it more difficult to reach any conclusions. A similar situation occurred in Canada, where wet conditions and other mishaps in Free Practice limited their track time.
Similarly, there will only be 60 minutes of practice in the Americas before competitive sessions begin. With that said, there will still be opportunities to learn – the margin for error and experimentation will just be smaller.
With Ferrari and Red Bull unlikely to bring any further updates, it will be important to observe how the Mercedes-powered teams perform.
