Vettel – 2022 season will be a “true test” for Aston Martin

Sebastian Vettel says the upcoming Formula 1 season will be a “true test” of Aston Martin’s abilities as the team revealed its new AMR22, built to F1’s radical new regulations for 2022.

Aston Martin became the first of the 10 F1 teams to reveal the actual 2022 car they will be running in the first pre-season test later this month as they unveiled the AMR22 at Aston Martin Lagonda’s headquarters in Gaydon this afternoon.

Following a disappointing season where the team fell to seventh in the constructors’ championship and team principal Otmar Szafnauer departed the team in January to be replaced by former BMW motorsport head Mike Krack, Vettel says he believes the team should be judged based on their performance from this season, rather than how the team managed during his first year with them in 2021.

“I think that the truth is the team is growing,” said Vettel. “Obviously having a shuffle in management is always a bit of a hiccup or a shake-up, and it will take time to overcome. But hopefully we manage to pull together.

“Despite growing in size, becoming leaner or more efficient in our processes, I think this year will be a true test for us and we will see how good we are.”

Vettel says that the team’s loss of performance last season in their transition from Racing Point to Aston Martin was a reflection of the team prioritising the dramatic regulation changes for the upcoming season.

“As I said last year, we couldn’t show anything because we didn’t focus on bringing any updates,” Vettel said. “Whereas this year, it’s all about this set of regulations, this generation of cars, and we will be able to show what we can produce and we should be measured based on that.”

Despite the opportunities offered by the major shake-up of technical regulations for the 2022 season, Vettel says he still expects the familiar teams to feature at the front of the grid this year.

“If you look at the podium, it will still look the same this year,” he said. “But we hope we are in much better shape than last year.

“We have the ability this year to develop the car – we didn’t do that last year for probably more than three quarters of the season. So it will be very different. Obviously last year, we knew from the start that it’s going to be a long and difficult season, so we hope for a better one.

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