Did Aston Martin's Imola F1 updates really fail?

In the early rounds of 2023's Formula 1 season, Aston Martin's rise from the midfield to regular podium-scoring form had been a convenient way to cleanse the palate amid Red Bull's domination of last year's championship. That the evergreen Fernando Alonso had thrown his lot in with the Silverstone team appeared to be a risk, but one that had paid off given the AMR23's plentiful grip and low-speed performance.

Had the Monaco tyre call been slightly different when rain began to loom large above the Cote d'Azur, Alonso might have beaten Max Verstappen to victory at the principality. Although podiums became less common after that, the veteran Spaniard nonetheless managed to visit the rostrum a few more times before the season was out - even when a late-season stack of upgrades took a few races to figure out.

It has not been quite so serene this term. Of the top five teams, Aston Martin has figured at the bottom end of that - and it's only the gulf between it and the lower midfield entities that appears to preclude it from facing a concerted challenge for fifth overall. Both McLaren and Ferrari have stepped up their progress so far this year, while Mercedes appears to be consistently ahead of the Silverstone outfit despite its own struggles with a W15 that lacks the performance of the current big three.

Insight: 10 things we learned at the 2024 F1 Imola Grand Prix

For Imola, Aston Martin sought to inject its own efforts to fight for podiums once again with an upgrade boost. A new nose and front wing had been developed to set up the flow for a new floor, complete with revised fences, edge wings and diffuser. The rear suspension's aero surfaces were also reworked, as was the bodywork around the engine. It was hoped that these would, per technical chief Dan Fallows, "broaden" the performance window of the car and start developing a higher baseline of downforce.

"It is quite aggressive," Fallows noted ahead of the weekend sessions at the Imola Grand Prix. "We knew we had a car [that] we had a lot of opportunities with at the beginning of the season, and we wanted to make sure we had continual upgrades coming through.

"This is probably our biggest one to date. But it's just part of our plan and we want to sort of keep going with this in the next few races as well. We focused on trying to make sure we can perform everywhere."

Alonso struggled across the weekend and left Imola without scoring any points

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

A back-to-back test between Alonso's car festooned with the new package and Lance Stroll's car in the previous specification was put into place for FP1, standard practice for a team wishing to crack on with the correlation work needed to explore an update's effect. It's hard to assess the two states from FP1's soft-tyre laps alone, given Stroll's best was set in the middle part of the session and Alonso's high watermark emerging towards the end: track evolution was a factor in the opening session.

As the weekend progressed, Aston Martin started to endure a miserable time in Italy. Alonso hit the wall in FP3 as the car washed out in the second half of Rivazza, prompting an undignified skitter across the gravel as he could do little to arrest the slide.

Repairs to his car emerged in time for qualifying, but again he rearranged the gravel - this time at Tamburello - and then had to pit with further issues to deny him a shot at breaking into Q2. This left Alonso 19th, which he wisely decided to forego with a pitlane start; thus, the race effectively became an extended test session to give Aston more time to understand its updates.

"It's early days to make conclusions"
Fernando Alonso

Stroll didn't have a particularly easy run in qualifying either, being dumped out in 13th from Q2. The Canadian was not particularly complimentary of the upgrades afterwards, noting that they were "not good enough" and hadn't delivered the uptick in competitiveness that the team was hoping for.

PLUS: Imola Grand Prix Driver Ratings 2024

He nonetheless rallied in the race with a long stint on the medium tyre, one that allowed him to pit for the hard compound as late as lap 37 and ultimately yielded two points with moves on Daniel Ricciardo, Nico Hulkenberg, and Yuki Tsunoda greasing his path to ninth. But, for all of the work that Aston Martin had done to its AMR24, it was not a particularly strong yield from Imola.

Stroll reckoned that although the updates largely worked, the performance gains were just simply too small to keep pace with its main rivals. Alonso, usually forthright when events do not work in his favour, was more circumspect with his feelings about the new package. He explained that the team had experimented heavily over the Imola weekend, and that it might take a few more races to truly understand how the new aerodynamic parts work.

"I don't know [how good the updates are], I think we experimented a lot in FP1, in FP2 with Lance's car, with different packages. FP3 was another experiment," Alonso said. "Another one now in the race, taking the opportunity on my car to start from the pitlane. So I think it's early days to make conclusions. And I think it's a question for the team with all the data they have, they will give more precise information."

Stroll was none too complimentary about the upgrades

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

He added that it was up to the team to put full focus on tailoring the AMR24's set-up for qualifying in Monaco, and that making it handle well was the most important thing - otherwise this year's edition of the Monaco GP might be "torture".

Given Alonso's excursions and Stroll's disappointment with the new developments, questions have been raised once more about Aston Martin's ability to iterate its cars over a season. Last year, it struggled to keep pace with McLaren and Mercedes despite arguably starting the year ahead of both in the performance stakes, and a series of public experimentations in Austin and Mexico seemed to be in response to a baffling drop in fortunes. Is that phenomenon starting to rear its head again?

Team principal Mike Krack doesn't entirely think so, suggesting that the group of journalists in the Aston Martin motorhome "keep the church in the town" and not jump to conclusions. He also noted that Alonso came out the other side of that troubled North American leg with a podium in Brazil.

The Luxembourger pointed out the car was still more than capable; in a standard weekend, one can assume Aston Martin would default to ninth and 10th places by the end of a race, and Stroll managed to rescue one of those expected results. However, Krack also revealed suspicions that the updates had given the green machine something of a mean streak in terms of handling.

"We come away with two points, and I think it was quite a good outcome, it shows that the car is still capable of doing things," Krack reflected after the race. "But we have also seen that it is difficult to drive. We had a couple of offs over the weekend. The one from [Saturday] actually impacted us the most, because we were really on the back foot from that point onwards.

"We're not happy with two points. That is clear, but other people are also bringing upgrades. It is always a relative game. So you have to really try to keep up there - and understand what you're doing.

"It's tough. We must not underestimate that. I think, except one team, everybody has one page of a list full of upgrades. So it shows how competitive the whole field is, and it's something where you have to really keep pushing and bringing more stuff and also understand everything."

Krack played down the notion that Aston Martin's disappointing Imola weekend was due to its upgrades not working

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

In this year's arena, where teams have been on the front foot in preparing for races with large upgrade packages, it simply appears as though Aston Martin has been able to consolidate its position, but no more than that. All top five teams introduced hefty upgrade packages at either Imola or in Miami, and Aston is finding that simply matching the output of the other teams is not going to bring about a surge in fortunes at races.

But the season is still early and, if the team has the resources to start surpassing its rival outfits, it can start to make progress. Note McLaren's precipitous rise last season, where it spent the early races revising the foundations of its MCL60 to create a slightly more competitive baseline, before putting together an additional package together for Austria that tacked on the performance needed to break into the top half of the field.

Monaco will be something of a test for Aston Martin, particularly as the low-speed nature of the circuit pandered to the characteristics of last year's car so well. Fallows spoke about widening the envelope, but it'll become clear later this week if the AMR24 retains at least some of the performance that its predecessor held on a street circuit.

"We'll do our homework, we have a lot to work on, we have a lot to understand and we see how it renders out," Krack added.

"We certainly see this year, the margins have become even smaller. As soon as you are on the wrong end of these more margins, you can be out. I think Lance said on Friday night, you can be out in Q1 and you can be 8th or you can [progress] and be fifth. It's just so close. And if you're at the right end of it, with the track improvements, with the traffic you can have an amazing starting position. But you can also be completely at the back."

It's not as simple as looking at Aston Martin's admittedly dismal Imola weekend and dismissing any notion that the upgrades had worked. Rather, it's how these upgrades feed into the rest of the season. If progress stalls out completely, then there's cause for concern. But if these changes provide the basis for a more prosperous second half of 2024, then the picture might look a little more rosy.

Stroll did pick up points for the team after executing a long first stint, allowing him to attack on fresh mediums in the final stint

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images