2024 Aston Martin | Aramco F1 Team

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My first impression of the car on the first day of the 2023 pre-season was better than the impression I had now.

If only Alonso drove in the evening

[mvfad]

Stroll did well in Bahrain last year even without participating in the pre-season and with broken wrists, so it's a track he wouldn't have difficulty with if the car is very good.

But I'm not even talking about the result, but about the car's behavior. I remember that in the 23 pre-season I was very impressed with the ARM23's traction and braking right away (even with Drugovich in the car).

[GoranF1]

Problem whit this team (also Redbull) you have one driver that overperformes and one underperformes so it's difficult to say where they are. Alonso can be anywhere for 1 tenth to 1 sec faster than Stroll per lap.
It's almost good in these testing situations to have two mediocore drives like Ferrari and Mercedes.

[RedNEO]

At least Alonso gets to drive the evening on Friday. Aston clearly saving the best for last

[Egresi Tamás]

@lawrobarreto

Aston Martin, RB and Ferrari look intriguing

There have been high hopes inside Aston Martin that the team have delivered a good follow-up to their 2023 car that secured eight podiums – and based on Fernando Alonso’s superb run in the morning and an encouraging performance from Lance Stroll later in the afternoon, they may well be onto something.

It's believed the numbers correlated to those running off the wind tunnel and CFD (computation fluid dynamics simulations). Yes, it’s fair to say that the team haven’t pushed the car yet – but to have the AMR24 do everything they expected it to on a very smooth opening day… well, it’s no wonder they’re pretty happy

[NAPI10]

@lawrobarreto

Aston Martin, RB and Ferrari look intriguing

There have been high hopes inside Aston Martin that the team have delivered a good follow-up to their 2023 car that secured eight podiums – and based on Fernando Alonso’s superb run in the morning and an encouraging performance from Lance Stroll later in the afternoon, they may well be onto something.

It's believed the numbers correlated to those running off the wind tunnel and CFD (computation fluid dynamics simulations). Yes, it’s fair to say that the team haven’t pushed the car yet – but to have the AMR24 do everything they expected it to on a very smooth opening day… well, it’s no wonder they’re pretty happy

Thanks for the update; thats what is important at this stage.

[RedNEO]

@tgruener
Red Bull advantage around 3 tenths, not a full second, reckons Helmut Marko after first day of testing. Pack of other top teams seems to be bunched close together.

AMuS+ analysis (paywall):

Shovlin says Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren, and Aston Martin are all close together.

“For Marko, the result before the lunch break is more representative. Everyone drove under comparable conditions. Conclusion: "We estimate the actual lead to be three tenths." The rights holders and the competition will be praying that the man from Graz is right. Formula 1 cannot endure another season like last year or an even worse one.

Even if the chasing pack is even closer together than in 2023. Mercedes chief engineer Andrew Shovlin reads from the data: "There's almost nothing separating Ferrari, McLaren, Aston Martin and us. But one thing is also clear. Red Bull has its nose in front"


So not the second we were all fearing. Hopefully Aston is right up there like it looked in the morning

[KimiRai]

I wonder if the Merc rear suspension isn't very good, I remember Fallows giving a comment at launch about being forced to use it and Williams interesting opted to use last years suspension over the new Merc one. The Merc and Aston rear end is very similar in parts, and both teams haven't looked great yet.

Should have mentioned it earlier but apparently williams has stuck with the older suspension due to "logistical and cost reasons" so not really performance related.

[KimiRai]

Gary Anderson opinion on the aston looking at turn 11

The Aston Martin in Fernando Alonso's hands looked quite responsive once in the corner and was probably all-round the best-balanced car, but even then there was a little understeer at entry. That understeer increased with what appeared to be set-up changes mid-morning.

https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/what ... ing-debut/

[Alo_Fan]

I wonder if the Merc rear suspension isn't very good, I remember Fallows giving a comment at launch about being forced to use it and Williams interesting opted to use last years suspension over the new Merc one. The Merc and Aston rear end is very similar in parts, and both teams haven't looked great yet.

Should have mentioned it earlier but apparently williams has stuck with the older suspension due to "logistical and cost reasons" so not really performance related.

Thanks for clarifying, I didn't realise that. I heard Vowles mention they went for a radical approach so I assumed that was maybe went he was talking about.

[KimiRai]

Thanks for clarifying, I didn't realise that. I heard Vowles mention they went for a radical approach so I assumed that was maybe went he was talking about.

Its a bit weird, this is all I could gather from this website

James Vowles has confirmed that the FW46 will use the 2023 Mercedes gearbox and casing. Apparently he said it at the season launch earlier this month, but it wasn't released.
Doesn't sound like it was purely an engineering-led decision:
"For Mercedes, having to supply two customer teams will all-new gearbox and rear suspension layouts would have been an extreme logistical challenge."
I'm curious about what those interesting things Vowles mentions are:
“In terms of the rear suspension, there's bits that we're happy to talk about, but I'm going to save it for Bahrain, because there's some interesting things to talk about where we've gone on rear suspension.”

So in one hand he says they had to take old components but on the other he implies some kind of innovation

[xReVo]

You can rest assured that Mercedes won't have a worse rear suspension or gearbox than Williams , so Vowles' opinion matters little. Speaking of the rest, in my opinion it is useless to believe that Redbull is ahead by 1 second or 3 tenths. Regardless of the fact that 1 second would be exaggerated considering that the other teams have also improved. Aston Martin worked well today, lap times count for practically nothing considering that Verstappen did his best lap in the afternoon in 1.31.3 when last year's pole was 1.29.7 in the same conditions . All the teams are hiding from their real performance and are only doing correlation work with the data. If it is confirmed that Aston has data that matches that of the wind tunnel, this is a great thing. We'll see tomorrow, don't lose faith, in my opinion there will be positive things from Aston Martin in terms of performance

[Otromundo]

You can rest assured that Mercedes won't have a worse rear suspension or gearbox than Williams , so Vowles' opinion matters little. Speaking of the rest, in my opinion it is useless to believe that Redbull is ahead by 1 second or 3 tenths. Regardless of the fact that 1 second would be exaggerated considering that the other teams have also improved. Aston Martin worked well today, lap times count for practically nothing considering that Verstappen did his best lap in the afternoon in 1.31.3 when last year's pole was 1.29.7 in the same conditions . All the teams are hiding from their real performance and are only doing correlation work with the data. If it is confirmed that Aston has data that matches that of the wind tunnel, this is a great thing. We'll see tomorrow, don't lose faith, in my opinion there will be positive things from Aston Martin in terms of performance

@lawrobarreto

Aston Martin, RB and Ferrari look intriguing

There have been high hopes inside Aston Martin that the team have delivered a good follow-up to their 2023 car that secured eight podiums – and based on Fernando Alonso’s superb run in the morning and an encouraging performance from Lance Stroll later in the afternoon, they may well be onto something.

It's believed the numbers correlated to those running off the wind tunnel and CFD (computation fluid dynamics simulations). Yes, it’s fair to say that the team haven’t pushed the car yet – but to have the AMR24 do everything they expected it to on a very smooth opening day… well, it’s no wonder they’re pretty happy

I very much agree with both.

[diffuser]

Problem whit this team (also Redbull) you have one driver that overperformes and one underperformes so it's difficult to say where they are. Alonso can be anywhere for 1 tenth to 1 sec faster than Stroll per lap.
It's almost good in these testing situations to have two mediocore drives like Ferrari and Mercedes.

If you look at Piastri, last year, he was never more than 2 tenth off Norris's pace. So if Piastri would have run the afternoon, he would have had numbers similar to Norris. If Alonso would have run in the afternoon, he would have been right there.

[diffuser]

Problem whit this team (also Redbull) you have one driver that overperformes and one underperformes so it's difficult to say where they are. Alonso can be anywhere for 1 tenth to 1 sec faster than Stroll per lap.
It's almost good in these testing situations to have two mediocore drives like Ferrari and Mercedes.

If you look at Piastri, last year, he was never more than 2 tenth off Norris's pace. So if Piastri would have run the afternoon, he would have had numbers similar to Norris. If Alonso would have run in the afternoon, he would have been right there.