Aston Martin was the big disappointment at the Belgian Grand Prix. The Silverstone team, which had been enjoying some great weekends in recent races, took a significant step backwards in Belgium. However, there is an explanation for the poor performance of the AMR25 at the Spa circuit, and everything suggests that they will be able to get back on track in the coming races.
Aston Martin and the updates
Since Adrian Newey‘s arrival and the new wind tunnel, they have been working at full speed at Silverstone. The last two updates, those for the Silverstone Grand Prix and this past weekend in Belgium, were not planned so quickly. In theory, these improvements arriving ahead of schedule could be an advantage, but this has not been the case for several reasons. At Silverstone, they were barely able to gauge their true impact due to weather problems: every session that weekend was different, and the rain did not help in gathering the quality data needed to take that step forward. However, in the final stint of that race, in dry conditions, Fernando Alonso flew with the AMR25.
In Belgium, the situation was even more complicated. Fernando Alonso already warned about this at the pre-race press conference, when he hinted that the bad weather and the fact that it was a sprint weekend would not allow the team enough time or conditions to test the effectiveness of the parts, and that they would not use them if they were not completely sure of their effectiveness or how to use them. And so it was.
Aston Martin returned to Imola and did not incorporate the updates. As a result, they had the same problems they had before, struggling on circuits with high aerodynamic demands. The result was a disastrous qualifying for both AMR25s.
A poor strategy
The step backwards had already been taken, but now it was up to the team to plan the best strategy to try to score some points, which already seemed almost impossible. Given the weather conditions and Saturday’s poor qualifying, Fernando Alonso decided to change the car’s setup and switch the power unit, even though this meant starting from the pits. The forecast predicted rain throughout Sunday, so they set up the AMR25 to race in these conditions.
It did rain, but the race did not start until it stopped raining over Spa. The race began behind the safety car (ideal for starting from the pit lane without any disadvantage), with a wet track, but after six laps the track was already dry. This time Aston Martin got the Asturian’s pit stop right, gaining seven positions with the early tire change, but the AMR25 was a turtle.
Finally, as Fernando Alonso lamented, there was not a single incident in the race, not a single yellow flag, nothing… and he had to make a second pit stop to change tires (almost no one did), so he lost any chance of having a competitive race.
“We thought it would rain all day,” “we opted for a wet setup, you know, with a lot of rear wind and so on, looking at the forecast, and yes, I think we did six laps in the wet and then 38 in the dry and sunny, so we were slow.” “And then we lost another couple of positions with the final stop.”
Everything went wrong for Aston Martin in Belgium, one of those weekends to forget. However, the team is confident and hopes that in Hungary they can get the most out of the car and get back on the points, at the very least.