At a race where most teams brought upgrades, Aston Martin were perhaps the only one who didn’t make progress. If anything, Lawrence Stroll’s squad – once again – lost ground. Only Sauber were slower than Aston Martin, who have reacted to their immensely disappointing result in Texas.
Aston Martin fall further down the field
At this stage last season, Aston Martin were already slipping own the pecking order. However, they were still firmly a top 5 team – with Fernando Alonso even managing a podium finish at the Brazilian GP.
Despite spending the second half of 2023 trying to fix their upgrade slump, Aston find themselves facing the same dilemma. Only on this occasion time, even scoring points is becoming a challenger.
The only consistent impact of their updates this season (in Imola, Hungary and now COTA) is that other teams increase the gap and push Aston further down the grid.
Alonso and Stroll took the chequered flag in 13th and 15th respectively on Sunday, positions portraying the uncompetitive AMR24 machine at their disposal.
Speaking post-race, performance director Tom Mccullough downplayed the severity of the result:
“I think they have generally done what we expected they would do,” es.motorsport.com quotes him as saying.
“As you know, it’s a relative game.
“I think eight teams brought upgrades, and the other two can still bring them. This is Formula 1, nobody stays still.
“We are making the car faster, just like the others. So we have to keep working to develop the car every day to overtake the teams ahead.”
In the context of Aston Martin’s decline over the past 12 months, there is no interview that can paint their trajectory in a positive light.
Considering that their COTA upgrades were meant to form a template for their 2025 package, their lack of performance is extremely worrying.
Of course, one round is not necessarily enough to reach a definitive conclusion about the effectiveness of upgrades. With that said, there is little reason to expect the Silverstone-based outfit to make a recovery in the coming rounds.
