organic wrote: ↑19 Jan 2024, 01:23
I agree with everything they've said in the off-season. It all sounds reflective, realistic but positive. The major concern that I cannot let go of no matter what they now say is that I'm unsure how they could have been designing and developing the 2024 car with well-informed decisions when we look at what they were doing right at the end of the year with struggling to get their 2023 car to work which they should have tons of data for..
They will have made many of the major decisions for 2024 before the AMR23 had any issues and much of the maturation of the design before they seemed to get a grasp on the problems at the end of 2023
For me the biggest red flag has been the way they have addressed the underperformance throughout. During the season, first they blamed sprint races. That they had no time to set up the car with the new updates. Okay, Mclaren brought their major upgrade at a sprint weekend, got it to work immediately. They blamed the new tyres. Same for everyone. Said some of the tracks didn't suit their car's characteristics. Were nowhere in Singapore which was supposed to suit their car.
After the season, Fallows blamed an aggressive in-season development strategy which to me is worrisome on multiple levels. One, other teams like Mclaren, Mercedes and even Ferrari to some extent, undertook massive overhauls to their cars, much more drastic than anything AM did and still gained more performance. Two, AM had serious fundamental deficiencies since the beginning of the season (high speed corners, straight line speed/drag) and did not bring any significant updates to the car till Canada to address those. So I dont even think they had a more aggressive development plan compared to the rest. Fallows has also publicly stated frustration at the rules in interviews multiple times. Neither of these things suggest that AM are sitting on some deign ideas and solutions for next season which would gain them massive performance. They would need a similar jump to last season to have a chance at the front again imo.
You contrast that with how Mercedes and Mclaren responded to their underperformance at the start of the season and you notice a stark contrast. Mclaren knew the exact timeline to get back to the front, so seemingly knew precisely where they went wrong. Same with Mercedes. Russell was very specific in an interview when he said their floor needed to be better when everyone was focused on the sidepods. Mercedes had to live with certain design/chassis decisions for the whole season so they couldnt do every change they wanted but still made significant progress.
While anything is possible, I think its more likely that the trick AM found with their front wing masked some fundamental deficits in the car. I expect them to be around Alpine and Alpha Tauri at the start of the season, and would consider them having done well if they can stay ahead of them by the end.