Aston Martin is struggling, but is looking for solutions for 2025

What future for Aston Martin? Last year, Lawrence Stroll’s team left the Brazilian Grand Prix with a podium thanks to Fernando Alonso’s third place, secured on the final lap by overtaking Sergio Perez. An eighth podium of the season that demonstrated the clear progress of the team, progress they hoped to continue in 2024. However, despite a rather promising start to the season, Aston Martin has gradually slipped down the hierarchy, to the point of being the slowest car on the grid last week in Brazil when the track was dry. A situation that forces drivers to take more risks, as evidenced by the two accidents during qualifying in Brazil.

The slowest car at Interlagos.

The double Spanish world champion commented on the limited competitiveness of the car throughout the races, criticizing in particular the lack of balance of the single-seater and abnormal brakes throughout the race. « We are taking big risks,” he said after his crash in Q3. “We are the tenth fastest team on dry track and we were P2 in qualifying… it shows the level of commitment we had. » Nevertheless, the team seems to have identified the cause of the brake problems encountered by the drivers on Sunday. They are related to a configuration change in the floor, introduced due to the two accidents during qualifying.

As a result, the team has returned to the old Budapest concept, adapted for high-speed circuits like Vegas or Qatar, but less effective for low-speed layouts like Brazil, where Aston Martin was considering using the model introduced at Suzuka. A decision that led to aerodynamic imbalance and a different behavior of the car, the drivers experiencing multiple instances of rather unusual wheel lock-ups and rebounds that made life difficult for Fernando Alonso. A situation that raises questions about the ability of the Silverstone-based team to effectively develop the car after two consecutive seasons in which it has regressed in the hierarchy throughout the races.

Aston Martin is seeking to understand its problems.

Tom McCullough, director of performance at Aston Martin, wanted to mitigate the criticism, emphasizing that introducing multiple chassis configurations is not a novelty as the team had already done so last season and that it is above all a strategy planned since the beginning of the year to obtain the maximum amount of data and understand where to find more performance. “We had two main flat floor philosophies this year, and we developed both because they are suitable for different types of circuits. The flat floor we brought to Austin aimed for a compromise between the two and was also an experiment for next year,” he explained to the media in the paddock, as reported by Autosport.

Aston Martin is mainly looking to obtain information for next year and sees the last Grand Prix as tests to identify the ideal direction to put the team back at the top of the grid.

Difficulties in moving the car forward

Despite everything, the British driver is aware of the long way to go to get back on the podiums, especially as the engineers are struggling to bring effective improvements throughout the season, with a car that eventually drifts away from the front of the race, as in the last two seasons. The performance is relative. We didn’t progress this year as we wanted, so our development compared to other teams hasn’t been strong enough, which explains our difficulties in scoring points on all types of circuits.

Comments shared by Aston Martin’s director, Mike Krack. The development direction has always been clear, and it’s crucial – perhaps more than people imagine – but we haven’t managed to achieve the expected performance goals and to provide Lance and Fernando with a competitive enough car. There are important lessons to be learned from this. Maybe we were a bit too hasty in making improvements on the track. Something to take away from this: quality over quantity. The British team is seeking to rectify its mistakes and seems to want to implement a new philosophy, drawing inspiration from McLaren and prioritizing more efficient evolutions that can be optimized throughout the races.

A new era is opening for the British team.

The recent arrivals of Enrico Cardile and Adrian Newey, as well as the upcoming deployment of new infrastructure, should allow Lawrence Stroll’s team to regain a certain level of competitiveness and consistency over an entire season. For Mike Krack, the team is moving in the right direction, with already encouraging progress on the 2025 car. There is a lot going on behind the scenes that convince me that we are heading in the right direction, hence my confidence. We are in a much better position than last year, as we have learned a lot – from both our successes and our mistakes. We are becoming more rigorous, formulating our goals more precisely, and asking more questions to better align our expectations and achievements.