McCullough: Every year our cars get better

Aston Martin F1 chief engineer Tom McCullough spoke on Thursday about what his team is working on and what is planned for the final pre-season test day in Bahrain.

Tom McCullough: “It’s always nice to be back working on the track, because the last six months or more have been in the development phase of a new car, and now we’re seeing it in action and studying its characteristics – it’s interesting and nice!

The winter off-season was completely different this year, as the team’s entire technical department moved to a new base building in Silverstone, and now all our specialists work in one spacious office, and to see how the car manufacturing process parts expires, just go down to where the production site is located.

Every year our cars get better, but in 2024 I was really impressed that all processes related to creating the chassis were organized to the highest standards.

The first day of testing went well, at least in the sense that we completed the entire program, both drivers were happy with the basic balance of the AMR24 and the car’s behavior on track generally corresponded to what we saw in the simulator saws .

Although it is not easy to work on the track today due to the strong winds, we are nevertheless trying to obtain all the necessary data needed to optimize and further modernize the car. But we are not working on speed yet, we will do that later.

So far, our program analyzes various adjustment options, including the ground clearance of the car, studying the efficiency of the front wing, and at the same time a special grille with many aerodynamic sensors is attached to the chassis – all this helps to collect the necessary data.

With each set of laps we understand our new car better, and in the next testing phase we plan to conduct race simulations and qualifications – then it will become clearer how we look compared to our competitors.