Aston Martin has copied Red Bull solutions

The Aston Martin car fell short of its makers’ expectations at the start of the season, so the Silverstone team had to make serious efforts to correct the AMR22’s inherent flaws, and they brought a significantly improved chassis to Barcelona.

There are many changes, and they are so striking that the new car can be called the “B version”. The day before, Aston Martin had been working late in the pits and the team even had to break the curfew while preparing gear for the start of the weekend, which we have already written about.

The main problem with the original version of the AMR22 is that the car was subject to strong build-up at high speeds. In order to somehow reduce the amount of chassis destabilization, the engineers of the Aston Martin race team had to increase the ground clearance, and this led to the aerodynamic kit no longer being able to work at the calculated efficiency.

Hence the loss of downforce and an increase in drag coefficient, as the lack of downforce had to be partly compensated by an increase in the angle of attack of the wings.

Aston Martin gave up on solving the problem with some minor improvements, and took the path of extensive chassis modernization, and a new version was prepared for the Spanish stage of the championship.

First of all, it is noticeable that the shape of the side pontoons on the AMR22 has changed – now they clearly resemble what we have seen on the Red Bull RB18 car since the start of the season. That. they used to be quite wide and had an almost flat top, now they have become much more compact, more oblique and, you could say, more elegant. In addition, there is even a similarity in the nuances, including the placement of the cooling system hatches and the shape of the air inlets. Rear-view mirrors – and reminiscent of one of the solutions developed by specialists led by Adrian Newey.

When the first photos of the updated Aston Martin car appeared on social networks, fans immediately began to joke that Lawrence Stroll, the owner of the team, managed to fulfill the dream of Sebastian Vettel, who once said that at the end of his career he would like to get behind the wheel of Red Bull again.

The art of copying borrowed solutions at Silverstone was probably mastered to perfection, because it was not for nothing that in 2020, when the team was still called Racing Point, the cars were called “pink Mercedes” – the resemblance to the chassis from last year’s championship team was so clear and detailed. And in that season, Sergio Perez and Lance Stroll confidently started to score points from the first races of the season, and in Bahrain the Mexican took his first win.

It is surprising that now, in a very short time, Aston Martin was able to recreate the car so significantly, because not only the body parts and elements of the aerodynamic body kit were updated, but also the layout of the cooling system. If earlier radiators were placed horizontally, now at an angle – making such adjustments requires very serious effort and expense.

The extent to which all this will bear fruit will be revealed over the coming weekend, as the Barcelona circuit is considered one of the best testing grounds for testing aerodynamic solutions for a reason – if the chassis has flaws, they are sure to show up here. And if the effectiveness has really increased, you can follow that too.

It was feared that Aston Martin simply did not have enough production capacity to prepare two such radically redesigned cars for the Spanish round of the championship, but the team confirmed that Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel would receive identical versions of the AMR22. Yesterday, Technical Director Andy Green flew from England to Barcelona and personally supplied the latest new parts for two upgraded cars.