nmarques71 wrote: ↑20 Apr 2025, 14:03
Hi,
Well, Andy Cowell said this:
After recent difficult races, Cowell addressed Aston Martin’s struggles and their path forward, ahead of the Saudi Arabian GP. “I guess the car we’re racing at the moment was created away from our own wind tunnel,” he said.
“We are learning a lot from the measurements that we can take at the track, which is the Third World for the aerodynamicists, but we’ve got a 2025 model in our wind tunnel, the Silverstone, and the CFD data. We’re spending a lot of time looking into the correlation between the track world, wind tunnel and CFD to understand the differences that we see there.”
“And listening to the drivers and looking at the data of what the car is doing to try and piece all that together and understand what are the characteristics that we should continue to improve or start improving in order to make sure that the stopwatch stops sooner.”
When asked if the team’s current car serves as a laboratory for their new wind tunnel, Cowell agreed, saying, “Yes, I think for a group of engineers it’s important that you understand the tools that you’ve got.”
“You understand the simulations and the results from experiments that you do at the home base. And the objective with any experiment is that you mimic as best as possible the track environment.”
“And that’s what we’re trying to do. It’s trying to come up with methods and tools that enable us to create a racing car that when you put it on the track, it behaves exactly as you’d like it to.”
And from the press conference:
Q:
You mentioned new tools. The new wind tunnel has been on stream for nigh on a month. When are we going to start to see the first fruits of its labour?
AC:
Since the Melbourne weekend, the wind tunnel’s been in use. It’s being used for both 2026 aero development and 2025 aero development. We’ve transitioned to this tunnel, and there’s hardware coming through that we’ll see at the circuit in the coming races. People often talk about how to tell the time when you’ve got two watches – how do you tell the aero load when development work has been done in one wind tunnel and then you swap across to the next? They’ll never tell you exactly the same. But we are enjoying the new wind tunnel. It's opened our eyes to a few characteristics. But then you’ve got to do the work. If you’ve got a new test facility that gives you a clearer view, a more representative view, you’ve got to then do aero development work – you’ve go to change shapes, make parts, understand, and then make full-size components to bring to the circuit and measure in this complex environment. We’re in that process, enjoying the new tool, and look forward to making a faster race car with it.
