The greats look at Aston Martin. According to internal calculations by the teams, the AMR23 is one of the cars that has evolved the most over the winter. AS received that ‘feedback’ by engineers of weight in Formula 1 and now Toto Wolff designates them, in the German publication Auto motor and sport, as possible “seconds” in the Bahrain GP of this weekend; and Christian Horner already warned before that they could be closer to Red Bull than expected: “I think they have taken a big step. It seems that their concept car has moved them forward and they are not that far off. Ferdinand (Alonso), in particular, it looks very competitive.”
It is one of the readings of the pre-season tests, which between Thursday and Saturday showed a reasonably competitive Aston Martin: the first day, Alonso stayed 12 thousandths behind Verstappen; the second, was the one who was closest to the Dutchman with the Pirelli C3; the third, their racing simulation left their jaws dropped many specialists in the paddock.
And what does the Silverstone team say about it? Mike Krack, Aston Martin boss, does not pick up the gauntlet. “That’s how the dynamics are, but We have to keep our feet on the ground. The expectations are high at this time of the year and we all want to do well. We have the clear goal of improving what we did last year, and that’s it. Would it impress me to be in front of Mercedes? If we are ahead of the sixth or seventh car, where we were last year, that would already be an improvement. And that’s not to say we’re impressed.”
Aston Martin finished seventh in the World Championship manufacturers, although in the last races of the season they behaved like the fifth or sixth car behind the big three and up there with Alpine and McLaren. Since the summer they focused exclusively on the AMR23 project, with the technical director Dan Fallows in the lead (formerly head of aerodynamics at Red Bull) plus insights from Eric Blandin (previous head of aerodynamics at Mercedes). The signing of Alonso was the icing on the cake for the Silverstone project to aspire to better results. They look to 2024 as the date to fight for victories but… maybe some more achievable targets may have to be brought forward to 2023.
