The layout of the Hungaroring plus the latest upgrades coming for the AMR23 gives Aston Martin extra confidence heading into this weekend’s race.
Team principal Mike Krack expects the track’s combination of low to medium speed corners plus short straights will suit their car.“We are realists. We have always been, we have never been dreamers,” he said. “So we will look at the track, we will look at our car, how to set it up for that.
“If you look at the characteristic, it should play better into our car than other circuits that we have been to. Qualifying is key, especially in circuits where you struggle more to pass like the one that will come, although it is now a bit easier than it used to be.”
The team will also have the latest in a series of recent upgrades this weekend. “We will have a free practice session, we will bring new parts to Budapest and we will be able to test them.”
The update will complement other new parts brought by the team over the past month, said Aston Martin’s performance director Tom McCullough. He believes the team “have got a good understanding of our own car and what’s the strengths of that car” which is allowing them to be judicious in their choice of upgrades.
“We introduced the update in Canada, the floor, the rear brake duct and the rear corners that came [at Silverstone] were the final part of that,” he explained. “It’s largely doing what we think it should be doing at every track, strengths and weaknesses.”
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However he acknowledged “the competition aren’t standing still.”
“I think we’re quite looking forward to the next couple of races with the car we have,” continued McCullough. “We’re always trying to bring parts of the car as soon as they’re ready and they’re going to make the car fast.
“We’ve actually bought a lot of updates a lot of different times of the car. We’re going to continue doing that for a while.”
However because of Aston Martin’s strong start to the 2023 season, the team has less wind tunnel time available under Formula 1’s Aerodynamic Testing Restrictions. Having ended last year seventh, they reached the halfway point in third place.
“We knew that was coming,” said McCullough. “Having seen the strength of the team in the first few races, we knew we were going to lose the wind tunnel time
“All teams are always working on the operational efficiency in the wind tunnel and that’s something which we were having to get ready for with the way we mapped the car, the way we developed the car, the way we understand the car.
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“So at the end of the day, it is a hit, you want more running, but we’re pretty well prepared for it and we’re already well into that now.”
The development of the Aston Martin AMR23 has put more focus on qualifying performance, which is more important at the Hungaroring than most circuits.
“We do, historically as a team, focus heavily on race performance,” said McCullough. “But you have to try and qualify well too, and at certain circuits it’s obviously more important than others.
“So on inherent tyre management, car set-up philosophy, we used to be a little bit too race-focused at times last year. And we sort of consciously tried to balance that out a bit better.”
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2023 Hungarian Grand Prix
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bazza65
19th July 2023, 8:57
It sounds very much like the AM23 development has stalled. The excuses such as race pace focus over qualification is just denial that they cannot match RB or now McLaren. Aero aside the Mercedes PU and rear set up, suggests its more than an aerodynamic operating window, the car is intrinsically linked to Mercedes performance. British GP AM were the 3rd Mercedes powered team.
There is no doubt the the first half of the season has captured the imagination of everyone, perhaps none more so than AM. The work now must be how to extract the full potential of the chassis, they have stolen a march on everyone at the start of the season, another quantum is now required to bridge the gap to the front of the grid.
Keith Campbell (@keithedin)
19th July 2023, 11:04
I wasn’t aware that is how the wind tunnel restrictions worked. So the wind tunnel allocation for the second part of the season updates based on the team’s championship position at some point during the season? I thought it was just set at the start of the season based on the team’s finishing position for the previous year. That makes more sense to me than picking an arbitrary point in the middle of the season. As we’ve seen, since the early part of the season is more heavily focused on street races, that favours some teams more than others, so the current championship position might not be reflective of where they would end up by Abu Dhabi.