Aston Martin is testing a completely different car in a wind tunnel
The performance director of Aston Martin, Tom McCullough, spoke about the planned improvements for the AMR22 of the Silverstone-based team. He also addressed the close relationship between his team and Mercedes, with whom they share the wind tunnel.
Tom McCullough, the Director of Performance at Aston Martin, has revealed some details about the development program of the team acquired by Lawrence Stroll. While Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll’s cars have had rather satisfactory tests, McCullough promises that Aston Martin is also working on a very different car at the factory.
« The car you see now has nothing to do with the one we have in the wind tunnel. I think it’s the same for everyone in the paddock. By adapting and optimizing the car, there will be a strong element of the car, and that’s how we see what we had only half-watched before. So we are reviewing all our data.
»
« As Andrew Green (technical director of Aston Martin) had said, we are trying with this car not to put ourselves in a dead end. So with all the solutions we had, we decided to take liberties and not restrict ourselves to a single philosophy. And that’s what we’re doing, we are open to convergence. »
McCullough also cleared his team of being aware of the drastic developments that Mercedes made on their sidepods in Sakhir. The teams shared the wind tunnel at the Silver Arrows factory. An example of collaboration between two teams that does not please everyone in the paddock.
« We had no idea it was going to happen,” McCullough justified. « We don’t share this kind of information. Rear suspensions, gearbox, engine, that’s what we share. So cooling technology has nothing to do with our knowledge. I started seeing it on social media the day before [the Bahrain trials], a lot of people were talking about it. »
Aston Martin has already faced difficulties due to its ambiguous relationship with Mercedes. In 2020, the team then known as Racing Point was sanctioned for irregular brake ducts and, more notably, a very striking resemblance to the 2019 Mercedes W10, which caused a lot of talk in the paddock. The RP20 was given the nickname “Pink Mercedes.”
