Aston Martin curious about McLaren’s approach to its updates

Aston Martin wants to draw inspiration from the best. The British team based in Silverstone recently explained its intention to examine the approach used by McLaren, which refused to incorporate a new floor on its car even though the Woking team is competing with Ferrari and Red Bull for the constructor’s title this season. A surprising choice, but it shows McLaren’s determination not to replicate what other teams are doing, as they made the mistake of introducing upgrades that ultimately made their cars less competitive.

A floor unchanged since Miami

Therefore, instead of introducing a few developments during several Grand Prix races, the British team preferred to implement two major evolution packages in Miami and the Netherlands. The car’s floor is still the same as in the first American race of the season, a sign of McLaren’s patience this season, which aims above all to optimize the car every weekend, even more. This also demonstrates the confidence of the team’s leaders, such as Zak Brown and Andrea Stella, in the engineers, who have always managed to improve the car with each new development. Rob Marshall, McLaren’s chief designer, had also insisted on defending this idea, believing that it was better to wait to introduce developments rather than rushing to hope to immediately gain the missing tenths of a second.

A method that Aston Martin wants to draw inspiration from

« It is about constantly seeking aerodynamic support. We like to bring the pieces together and throw them all in one go. So far, we have simply put together these elements. In a way, it’s good to make many small improvements all the time, a bit like our beam wing this weekend. But sometimes you have to hold on a little while waiting for a series of improvements to come together. » A decision that contrasts with that made by rivals Red Bull, Mercedes, and Ferrari, who all tried to catch up with a new package of improvements, but eventually encountered numerous problems arising with their car, like the Austrian team, which has been facing a balance issue on its RB20 for several weeks.

A situation that also affected Aston Martin earlier in the season, due to a new update at Imola, which was supposed to allow the British team to catch up with the top four teams. Seeing the huge progress of McLaren, Lawrence Stroll’s team is starting to wonder and consider the possibility of using the same development technique as their English counterpart. “We are studying this closely,” said Krack, the team manager. “If you compare the speed, and you see when McLaren took a step forward, you can establish a correlation with some announced updates, although we never have the full picture. When you look, for example, at the Zandvoort update, it’s a bit here, a bit there, and a bit more there. You see how complex and sharp these cars have become, so I think it would be foolish not to look into it.”

Aston Martin appears to want to imitate other teams like McLaren and Mercedes, who have greatly improved their cars this season. The Luxembourger hopes that his team will be able to achieve a similar feat in the future. « We were at the same level as Mercedes at the beginning of the season for the first races, and now they have won races. So it is possible to make substantial progress with these regulations if you stabilize the car and it behaves as the drivers wish. » With the arrival of Adrian Newey early next year, the team based in Silverstone has a definite asset to bring it back to the top.