Aston Martin has responded to the growing concerns over the team’s direction this season, asserting that their recent upgrade in Austin was not unsuccessful as some are claiming.
Amidst the cloud of speculation, McLaren’s Lando Norris remarked, “Aston seem to have made the car slower and slower with every upgrade. For us it’s been vice versa.” These observations come after a noticeable mid-season decline in performance by Aston Martin, which was pronounced in Austin, despite the team’s consistent development efforts for the 2023 car.
The weekend was particularly challenging for Aston Martin. Both their drivers, Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, had to start the US GP from the pitlane. This decision was due to breaches in parc ferme rules, which resulted from a total overhaul of the cars’ setups after a more-than-disappointing pre-race performance with the ‘new’ green car.
Alonso, shedding light on the car configurations for the back-to-back comparison, informed DAZN, “On Saturday we did the race with the new (upgraded) car and on Sunday Lance did it with the new one in a different configuration and I had the old one, which was a setup we know the best. Now we will put everything on the table and draw the conclusions.”
Despite the pre-race hurdles, the Silverstone-based team is optimistic about the findings from the race weekend. Alonso, who faced a retirement from the US GP due to floor damage, remained positive. He noted, “There was suddenly a lot more pace in the car. We could overtake the midfield with some ease and we were even getting closer to (George) Russell. So I think it was good news. We wanted to leave Austin at least with some clear conclusion going into Mexico. The race was more of a FP0 (free practice 0) to get to FP1 in Mexico prepared.”
Mike Krack, Aston Martin’s Team Principal, echoed Alonso’s sentiment. While acknowledging that a comprehensive analysis based on lap times and results is still in progress, he confidently stated, “Right now we only have the laptimes and the results so we still have to analyse, but we don’t think the new update package is bad.”