2023 Aston Martin | Aramco | Cognizant F1 Team

[zoroastar]

aston were doing a lot of lift and coast again today. i assume it was fuel? i wonder why this is an ongoing thing, and i wonder how its affected alonsos pace compared to hamilton. he was faster than one of the mercs but wasnt scaring hamilton at all

[peewon]

It's better than barely getting into the points on pure pace. The situation is reality

They are solidly the 5th best team ahead of Alpine, although they are not a million miles behind so finishing in the points should be straight forward. Its usually not higher than 7th or 8th, which would've been the case here without Mclaren setup gamble not working and Sainz's incident. This is the nadir of their performance this season and result today flatters them in terms of points but the pace is not really that different from the past few weeks.

are you saying mclaren didnt have enough sense to look at the weather forecast and set things up for the dry race? they must be incompetent. did they set the car up only for the sprint race? or perhaps for friday practice?

The weather forecast was for rain throughout the weekend. No weather forecast is 100% and Spa anyway has very variable weather which can turn quickly. It was quite evident from their pace in sector 2 which is all high to medium speed corners, pace in wet condition and deficit on the straights that they were running a high DF setup. They took an educated gamble that it would be raining during the race.

[diffuser]

I think if it was dry throughout it would've been clearer. Canada was pre-upgrades so completely different situation. Yes, their straight line speed, tyre deg and slow corners with traction are weak points but to what extent remains to be seen. Austria they were better than AM despite having lot of straights and slow corners. Here they opted for a high DF setup clearly anticipating weather throughout the weekend. They will be good in Monza I think. Maybe not 2nd best but better than AM unless next round of AM updates make significant improvement.

Yeah, I'm a AMR fan and the glass is half full. McLaren are faster but finished 17 seconds behind.

is it as depressing for you as it is for me coming in here and watching every single person about to jump off of a cliff? some of the people arent here today because they didnt have enough negativity to throw around with the decent performance aston had today.its kinda sad haha

ROFL-(Rolling on floor laughing)Yeah....I watched the sprint shiit late yesterday and I avoided this forum cause I knew it was just gonna be doom and gloom. Same thing happened on the McLaren forum earlier in the year. Long time McLaren fans and even some McLaren employees stopped posting there.

[Jambier]

P5 was « good » to limit damages, let’s hope to have a bit of upgrades to able to bounce back after the break

Let’s go team

[peewon]

aston were doing a lot of lift and coast again today. i assume it was fuel? i wonder why this is an ongoing thing, and i wonder how its affected alonsos pace compared to hamilton. he was faster than one of the mercs but wasnt scaring hamilton at all

They've been doing this since at least Canada. The way they explained it after that race was some faulty readings(?) which indicated they could run out of fuel but everything was fine. I know they've done it at least once in between Canada and Spa. Would have loved for someone to ask them about it.

[NAPI10]

There are rumors, Otmar back to AM . Seems weird to me but u never know

[jofs89]

aston were doing a lot of lift and coast again today. i assume it was fuel? i wonder why this is an ongoing thing, and i wonder how its affected alonsos pace compared to hamilton. he was faster than one of the mercs but wasnt scaring hamilton at all

They've been doing this since at least Canada. The way they explained it after that race was some faulty readings(?) which indicated they could run out of fuel but everything was fine. I know they've done it at least once in between Canada and Spa. Would have loved to for someone to ask them about it.

You'd imagine it's because they'd fuel with a safety car in mind with possible changeable conditions in Spa.

[Macklaren]

There are rumors, Otmar back to AM . Seems weird to me but u never know

I HIGHLY doubt that. Krack is doing a great job + I don't think Lawrence will want him back.

Surely Otmar is going to Sauber/Audi. Until Audi fully takes over in 2025, maybe we will see a return of this?

[KimiRai]

Not sure how true this might be but I'll share it.

[organic]

Isn't that completely the opposite of what the team members have said, and the changes to the car spec at Belgium which showed that they're reverting the floor edge design to more of a pre-canada spec?

I just think the journalist misinterpreted what he was told, or whoever he spoke to was trying to save face and not say directly that amr made a mistake. Imagine they did, and then gets reported "amr employee admits mistakes with development" on the next autosport article; their boss would be unhappy with them.

Many times teams have gone down a development path that wasn't quite right. It's not hugely surprising to me that it could happen to a team that was trying to be very aggressive with their development

There was exceptionally good correlation over the winter between the wind tunnel numbers developed and the performance on track. That probably gave them huge confidence to stride forward with their aggressive upgrade plan; sometimes that can hurt you as we've seen many times

[KimiRai]

Isn't that completely the opposite of what the team members have said, and the changes to the car spec at Belgium which showed that they're reverting the floor edge design to more of a pre-canada spec?

I just think the journalist misinterpreted what he was told, or whoever he spoke to was trying to save face and not say directly that amr made a mistake. Imagine they did, and then gets reported "amr employee admits mistakes with development" on the next autosport article; their boss would be unhappy with them.

Many times teams have gone down a development path that wasn't quite right. It's not hugely surprising to me that it could happen to a team that was trying to be very aggressive with their development

There was exceptionally good correlation over the winter between the wind tunnel numbers developed and the performance on track. That probably gave them huge confidence to stride forward with their aggressive upgrade plan; sometimes that can hurt you as we've seen many times

I agree, what you said makes much more sense than some form of secret deal with the FIA like Ferrari 2019 to be honest (if that's what the journalist is suggesting), but who knows I guess.

[diffuser]

aston were doing a lot of lift and coast again today. i assume it was fuel? i wonder why this is an ongoing thing, and i wonder how its affected alonsos pace compared to hamilton. he was faster than one of the mercs but wasnt scaring hamilton at all

They've been doing this since at least Canada. The way they explained it after that race was some faulty readings(?) which indicated they could run out of fuel but everything was fine. I know they've done it at least once in between Canada and Spa. Would have loved for someone to ask them about it.

They've been lift and coasting since race one. They didn't do much lift and coast in SPA by comparison. They typically don't lift and coast at the start of the race but as soon as Alonso get's into clear air...It's all about tire temps and lift and coast. From what I hear they will wait till the tire temps stabilise, then peak and then the temps to start to drop off. The drop off, I think, is a key for the tire is wearing out. In the early part of the season, they'd be in lift and coast mode then the engineer would come on the radio say some something like "Blank's tire temps are dropping". Then, boom Alonso pace would pick up and times would drop .5 seconds a lap. In Baku LeClerc was not giving anything away on the Radio so every 5-6 laps or so Alonso would pickup his pace to see if LeClerc could match him, then drop back off. Canada was a nightmarish amount of lift and coast.The engineer just kept asking him to do more more. At one point he told him not to go into 8th gear down the back straight(Think that allows the MGU-H charge the battery more, therefore, have more electrical energy to use over fuel). Usually it's about keeping tire temps down in certain stages of the race but you'll also hear the engineer say, at times, on the team radio "They think that a little more lift and coast in turn 9 and 10 will give us better performance." Now if that's code for something else, I don't know but that's what I heard on team radio. I've never heard any argument from Alonso.

[diffuser]

There is a current theory that Aston Martin found a loophole at the beginning of the season that the FIA quietly closed down.

According to
@f1talks
: Ted Kravitz pressed Mike Krack during an interview on the subject of misguided tweaks and changes to the car.

An interesting theme of changes forced on Aston Martin by the FIA came up in conversation. The team boss neither confirmed nor denied.

A statement by Matt Kew also indicates something suspicious:

Matt Kew: - “I can't say too much, but there is a clear reason for Aston Martin drop-off which is not quite to do with development direction.

[NAPI10]

There is a current theory that Aston Martin found a loophole at the beginning of the season that the FIA quietly closed down.

According to
@f1talks
: Ted Kravitz pressed Mike Krack during an interview on the subject of misguided tweaks and changes to the car.

An interesting theme of changes forced on Aston Martin by the FIA came up in conversation. The team boss neither confirmed nor denied.

A statement by Matt Kew also indicates something suspicious:

Matt Kew: - “I can't say too much, but there is a clear reason for Aston Martin drop-off which is not quite to do with development direction.

If there is any truth in it then its safe to assume that AM must have got something big in return. Whenever FIA tries to do something like this behind doors ; there is something substantial in offer to other party.

[organic]

That seems very tinfoily. I'd be shocked if it's true.

That said at the beginning of the season there were some comments from a team member that there are things that make them quick that aren't visible / non-bodywork related and I thought them odd at the time. But maybe it was nothing/ simply referring to floor or inboard suspension stuff