Can Aston Martin vanquish its current form to fight at the front?

The white paint on the walls had barely dried before the media tour of Aston Martin’s newest additions to its plush new Silverstone factory. The first building on its 37,000-square-metre facility, known as the Technology Campus to lend a studious feel to its nomenclature, had been completed in 2023 and houses the workshops, the CNC and milling machines, and other kit needed to put the car together. As for the rest, including the sections housing the wind tunnel and final remaining design offices, these are currently missing the final touches.

Nonetheless, the tour provided a sense of the team’s scale – or at least, the scale to which it aims to grow as the investment in its future continues. When the wind tunnel and associated offices are finished, the staff still working from the old Jordan ’tunnel in Brackley (of which the wind tunnel isn’t actually used, since Aston uses Mercedes’ facilities) can be integrated into the new building.

When it comes to the subject of Aston Martin, there’s a tangible sense of the transitional. There’s the slow disposal of the old era’s ephemera under the rebrand, the start of Dan Fallows’s technical leadership, the build of the new factory and, soon, the calibration of the new wind tunnel to ensure it can churn out the right numbers. Nothing appears truly settled; not yet at least, because more change is afoot with additional signings of high-value personnel.

It seemed during 2023 that the team was on the up, certainly during the early phases of the season. The streak of podiums that Fernando Alonso – enticed from Alpine’s apparent inertia by the vision of figurehead Lawrence Stroll – chalked up at the start of the year demonstrated a sudden leap from the midfield mire it had previously occupied.

But, says team principal Mike Krack, this was not entirely a fair reflection of where the team stood off-track, suggesting that 2023 was a display of overperformance relative to the basis that the team had in place.

“I think, and I already mentioned it at the time, that we will always be measured on this phase: where others were underperforming and we were overperforming in the competitive order,” Krack explains. “We managed to score a lot of podiums, a lot of points in a phase where others were really not having done their homework. And I think this was flattering, and probably not a true reflection of where we really were as a team. Not much had changed until then, we were still in our old campus, we had grown a little bit more, but in the whole process of the development of the team, this came in a little bit too early.

Aston Martin's Technology Campus is up and running, with the wind tunnel and other vital areas set to go live soon

Photo by: Aston Martin Racing

“And now we are all measured on that. And that puts obviously huge pressure on everybody, which is fair, which is also normal and to be expected. But I think we are maybe caught in a bit of reality now, because we all thought it was easier than it really is.”

Has Aston Martin stagnated in 2024?

Which brings us to this season, which Krack says has been a fairer reflection of where the team expected to be at the beginning of the year. And, despite not hitting the high notes that it managed at the start of 2023, qualifying performances had generally been strong and set up a period of diligent points-scoring in the opening rounds.

Then came a series of upgrades introduced at Imola in May, which the team hoped would start to push it towards the top four. A new front wing set off the introduction of a new floor, reshaped bodywork, and new rear suspension fairings to improve the aerodynamics top to bottom.

"We’ve got some balance characteristics that made the car a little bit harder to set up and drive. But I think most people are battling those. It’s always a compromise" 
Tom McCullough

Instead, it made the AMR24 far more difficult to drive, and the new parts instigated a dismal weekend at the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix. Alonso, in an incident uncharacteristic of his usual demeanour, clouted the wall at Rivazza during FP3 after skittering across the gravel, and then tickled the kitty litter again during qualifying. And, although Lance Stroll rescued a brace of points with a solid drive that weekend, it became patently clear that the hoped-for improvements had not emerged despite the volume of upgrades introduced.

As the likes of McLaren and Mercedes continued to move forward, Aston soon came at risk of being challenged by RB across the next phase of the season; performance was strong at the Canadian GP, but this appeared to be a function of circuit characteristics when the team wavered in Spain and Austria.

“We’ve got some balance characteristics that made the car a little bit harder to set up and drive,” explains performance director Tom McCullough. “But I think most people are battling those. It’s always a compromise. That said, we’re needing to add just base performance to the car to be competitive with the people we’re trying to race.

Aston hasn't hit the same heights as 2023 so far, as upgrades that arrived at Imola failed to deliver

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

“We fell a bit short [in Spain and Austria] and the nature of those tracks; we had the same spec car in Canada and had a much more competitive weekend. We sort of understand the reasons for that. But there’s lots of updates coming.”

It had been suggested that, given the lack of performance delivered by the upgrades, Aston was facing difficulties with correlation. As simulation tools develop, engineers can use real-world data to account for everything, beyond just the usual examples of computational fluid dynamics to approximate wind tunnel data. Full races can be simulated, using aero data, tyre models, and mathematical reproductions of almost every variable.

But when the performance on track doesn’t necessarily reflect the simulations, the validity of the data being used starts to come into question. This has been the case for a few teams, however. Ferrari’s Barcelona upgrades exacerbated a bouncing characteristic in high-speed corners that the team rolled back on, while RB spent the Austria round chopping and changing parts of its own Spanish GP package as rear wing flutter appeared to unsettle its VCARB 01 chassis.

Aston Martin has had to undo deleterious effects produced by upgrades too, which McCullough reckons is simply “the case for everyone up and down the pitlane; we’re bringing parts which sometimes they deliver a bit more, sometimes a bit less, sometimes the characteristics aren’t quite the same”. From the outside, we just don’t necessarily see those fluctuations from everybody, especially if they can mitigate those effects with set-up.

“When we look at our relative performance, I think we can identify Imola as one of the points because everybody brings upgrades to Imola,” Krack says. “And, if yours is not delivering what you expect and the others do, which I do not know but I have to assume, you take a step backwards. That’s the hard reality of Formula 1.”

Did Silverstone offer signs of a return to form?

When it became apparent that the Imola upgrades hadn’t quite gone to plan, Aston Martin needed to plot its course back into regular points contention to consolidate fifth in the championship. The upgrades hauled across the road to the British GP were not all-encompassing and amounted to ‘just’ a new front wing, along with revisions to the
car’s rear brake duct aerodynamics. The team hoped that these minor changes would help to unlock its current upgrade oeuvre.

It is early days for Aston's British GP upgrades, but initial signs are positive

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

It’s hard to read too much into it, given that the race was very much rain-affected, but a solid run to Q3 with both cars and a double points finish suggested that the AMR24 was in a much stronger frame of performance thanks to those tweaks.

That said, Krack was sensibly not willing to count his chickens post-race: “First of all, we need to have a look. The ranking is better than the previous two. We don’t have to be blind to see that, but we must analyse if the performance is better. We have changed some parts on the car, so we need to see what is the effect of that and then decide how we move on.

“We need to be careful comparing these races. When we were in Austria, it was 50 to 60 degree track temperature with the softest tyres. You come [to Silverstone], it’s very cold, you have the hardest tyres, so I think these are the effects that you have to isolate and separate, not that you get lost in just being driven by the ranking and the position.”

"We need to prove it. We need to not talk, and deliver the results" Fernando Alonso

That said, the driver feedback was positive. Alonso reckoned that the team had taken a step towards earlier in the campaign. Having been vocal about the AMR24’s increase in difficulty to drive, he stated that the revisions to the car at Silverstone – not just in upgrades, but in set-up breakthroughs too – had helped bring the car into a more prosperous window.

Although Alonso ‘occasionally’ has a penchant for hyperbole, he was keen to point out that the team’s next moves with upgrades needed to be strong. He reckoned that it was all very well scoring seventh and eighth at Silverstone, but it was up to the team to back it up in the two races prior to the summer break: “[Silverstone] was pretty good. I mean, the feeling was back to normality.

“We were the fifth, sixth fastest team. Nico [Hulkenberg] I think was very fast the whole weekend, but we could fight for points, seventh and eighth I think are more or less the positions we were before Imola. We came back to our more natural position, so I’m happy for that.

“It has been better: after Austria we regrouped a little bit, we understood a couple of directions that maybe were not right. And as I said, I’m happy to be back in the points, it felt more competitive.

Alonso feels Aston is back to its "natural position" after Silverstone, but wants the team to prove it over the next two races

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

“[But] we need to prove it. We need to not talk, and deliver the results. We’ve been bringing in a lot of new parts to the car and some of them work, some of them don’t. So hopefully in Hungary [this weekend] we have a positive surprise. We saw last year McLaren showing us how much you can change car performance in a season. And this year we have Mercedes. So there are two examples that it is possible: so it’s up to us.”

Is Aston prepared for the future?

That covers the tentative optimism that Aston Martin carries into the rest of 2024, but what about beyond that?

More transition beckons ahead of 2026, when the team starts its union with Honda as its new powertrain supplier on a works basis. This has created a few knock-on changes for the team’s technical output, in that it can no longer take its rear suspension and gearbox from Mercedes under the transferrable parts regulations because the architecture will be different.

The wind tunnel should be finished in time to prepare for 2026’s reforms, where the teams will race with active aerodynamics and a reduced ground-effect floor to complement the greater hybridisation present in the powertrains.

Team owner Stroll has also been busy with his chequebook to refresh the team’s technical line-up. In recent hirings, Enrico Cardile has been snapped up from Ferrari to serve as chief technical officer, while ex-Mercedes engine chief Andy Cowell now comes in as group CEO as Martin Whitmarsh leaves.

Cowell, one of the architects of Mercedes’ hugely impressive start to the V6 turbo-hybrid era, has a larger remit than just focusing on powertrains, and hopes to help Krack guide the team into more prosperous waters. Even so, his experience will be invaluable to Honda, which eventually enjoyed its own success as a turbo-hybrid powertrain builder after its dismal start with McLaren in 2015.

Krack is aware that, with a new CEO coming in, it is likely to herald more changes to ensure that the team can remain on track with its aim to become a championship-winning operation. But he’s relishing the chance to work with Cowell, and hopes that the Briton can bring his Midas touch over from his Mercedes days.

Lawrence Stroll has kept his chequebook open as the latest high profile signings come in - but can he capture the one they all want?

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

“Andy’s track record speaks for itself,” Krack says. “I think when he was managing director at Mercedes, it was like a phase of total dominance over many years, which speaks for him. Personally, I’ve never worked with him. I’m curious to see how that will go. But I think, when you see everything that he has done before, we all have reason to really be looking forward to it.

“The big targets are given by Lawrence. They are broken down into smaller ones, and smaller ones are cascaded down. I think the prime objective of Lawrence is very clear, and then we have to sit together and decide: ‘This is our roadmap as we have it today, do we need to adjust with the new CEO? How does he see things and what areas do we have to strengthen?’

“You always look for the balance between this department and that department, in terms of organisational development or the campus: do we need additional facilities here or are we not making enough use of that? These are all discussions that are going to happen, a review of our current plan and an adjustment, and I’m looking forward to that.”

There’s the elephant in the room: will Adrian Newey make his final F1 act on the Aston Martin stage?

And, of course, there’s the elephant in the room: will Adrian Newey make his final F1 act on the Aston Martin stage? It is understood that the revered designer was given a private tour of Aston’s new facilities as he considers his options upon leaving Red Bull early next year, and an Aston move would offer the chance for him to renew his working relationship with Fallows.

Thing is, Newey cannot communicate any decisions about his future until September, so it won’t yet be clear where his future lies. Ferrari remains an option, with a void for him to fill now that Cardile has left, but it is uncertain that Newey would wish to relocate to Italy. Stroll Sr will happily pay whatever it takes to bring him to the team, but the final decision will be Newey’s alone.

Since buying the Force India team when it stood upon the cusp of its demise, Stroll has been a demanding F1 team owner, but that’s only fair given the investment placed into the team’s facilities and personnel. There’s a feeling that, once the new factory is fully complete, the team can start to build momentum and challenge – sustainably, rather than fleetingly – for race wins on a more regular basis.

Perhaps Newey will be that final piece of the jigsaw, the wise old head who’s been there, won that, and collected the T-shirt on myriad occasions. While McLaren has built a genuine frontrunning car after years in the wilderness, it has often lacked that last smidgen of knowhow – the kind that turns occasional wins into a more frequent cadence of victories.

PLUS: Why soon-to-depart Newey isn't Red Bull's only senior figure to miss

Aston Martin, if it gets its lines right over the next couple of seasons, is going to need that too. If Red Bull’s hegemony over F1 titles is starting to end, the Silverstone squad will aim to fill that void. Building a race-winning car is one thing, and that’s Aston’s current aim. But using it effectively is quite another, and that’s where the star power comes in…

Can Aston consistently challenge at the top in F1?

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images