Andy Green, Aston Martin F1 Technical Director, acknowledged that the team had to take a number of measures to solve the problem of car sway at high speeds, but this led to a drop in pace, and losses are estimated at regarding 0.75 seconds per lap.
“I would say that we are still on the way to solving the problem,” said Green. – I had to make a number of compromises in working with the car and its settings in order to prevent buildup. But we have already tried something both in tests and in training, so there is progress.
We must admit that due to the destabilization of the machine at the moment we are probably losing more than half a second, more likely closer to three quarters of a second.
In Bahrain, neither Lance Stroll nor Niko Hulkenberg, who replaced the ill Sebastian Vettel, might not get into the second part of the qualification, but if their results on the circle were 0.75 seconds better, they would even have a chance to reach the final.
According to Green, the team is trying to find a solution to the problem by improving both the aerodynamic body kit and the chassis of the AMR22, but stressed that this will take time: “These two factors affect the destabilization of the car in one way or another, and both must be addressed.
This phenomenon is related to aerodynamics, we know what its causes are, we know what needs to be done, but in order to solve the problem, significant changes will have to be made to the aerodynamic kit of the car. And this will take some time.
You can apply temporary solutions and to some extent reduce the influence of this phenomenon, but in order to fully deal with it, you need to redo the aerodynamics. I think it will be a few races before we find the final solution that will allow us to achieve the desired pace, as well as provide the car with aerodynamic stability.
There is a search for a compromise. You can get rid of this buildup by reducing the speed, but this is a bad decision. Therefore, we must try to take into account both of these points, and we will try to do this for the next stage of the season.
We will be able to move forward to some extent by the second race, but it will be a few more Grands Prix before we fully cope with the problem and find a truly effective solution.
Ralf Schumacher, a former Formula 1 driver who played for the Toyota factory team in the 2000s, commented on the situation in which Aston Martin found itself: “The team has gone astray. They wanted to achieve too much in a short time, and in Formula 1 this does not happen. Here you can’t just gather a lot of people, stuff them into a common pot, give them a lot of money, and quickly mix them up in the hope that something will come of it.
This team wanted to take an overly frontal approach, which didn’t work at Toyota at the time.”
