Tom McCullough on the details of the weekend in Shanghai

Formula 1 returns to China for the first time since 2019, and ahead of the fifth round of the season, Aston Martin F1 chief engineer Tom McCullough commented on the extension of the contract with Fernando Alonso, and also spoke about the difficulties that will have to be overcome during the weekend in Shanghai.

Q: Fernando has agreed to continue working with the team until at least the end of 2026 – how important is this for Aston Martin?
Tom McCullough: This is really great news, because we will continue to work with Fernando for a number of seasons, including at the beginning of the period when the regulations in Formula 1 change. in 2026.

Since he joined the team, we have found his skills and experience to be invaluable in our pursuit of a place in the leadership group. He remains one of the fastest drivers in the championship and is still in top form. And now I can speak for the entire team: we are very happy that our journey continues together.

Question: For the first time since 2019, Formula 1 returns to China: what difficulties await the team at the Shanghai circuit?
Tom McCullough: This circuit is an impressive facility and the track is very good too. It is technical and has an atypical configuration, so engineers will have to solve interesting problems. There are many long curves, many combinations of curves that are connected to each other. Such sections require compromise setups, including the order of turns 1, 2 and 3, and a way must be found to get through them as quickly as possible.

In Shanghai your car will undergo a real test, because on this circuit there are both slow and fast corners. The main load falls on the front part of the chassis, and in long corners, like the first, it is mainly the left front tire that suffers.

We expect the condition of the circuit to change considerably over the course of the Chinese weekend, partly because not many races have taken place at this circuit in recent years. Plus, we haven’t driven the current generation of ground effect cars on this circuit yet, so we don’t have much information to base it on.

We will rely heavily on the data obtained on the simulator, based on which we will try to find good basic settings at the start of the weekend, but we already have an understanding of how the tires work in long corners. Additionally, we collected data in 2019, and to some extent much of this data still applies today.

Question: The first sprint of the season takes place this weekend. What difficulties does the team have to overcome in relation to this race format?
Tom McCullough: The sprint stage is a special kind of test, because you have to collect a large amount of information during the only Friday training and immediately afterwards take part in the main events of the weekend.

The rules for sprint racing have changed this year and qualifying, which determines the starting order on Saturday, will now take place on Friday after a single practice session. And the sprint precedes qualifying on Saturday.

The adjusted park rules now make it possible to change car settings after the qualifying sprint, while last year this was prohibited for the rest of the weekend after the so-called ‘shoutout’. qualifications prior to the sprint.

Therefore, between this qualification and the sprint, everyone will now have to rely mainly on the data obtained on the simulator, after which it will become clear whether the teams correctly estimated the characteristics of the track, whether the predictions of the behavior of the tires were correct, and whether they managed to guess with the settings.

Then, before Saturday’s qualifying, it will be possible to change the settings, if necessary, before the cars enter the indoor park.

Q: The team started the season full of confidence, including both drivers who highly appreciate their well-coordinated actions at pit stops and the right tactical decisions. How do you evaluate this work?
Tom McCullough: This year we’re actually doing really good pit stops. Stability and average pit stop times are the most important parameters on which we judge our work in the pit lane. We don’t pay much attention to very fast or slow pit stops, because we mainly work on stability together with the mechanics. For example, in Japan our pit stops were great.

If we talk about tactics, then not everything is bad here either. On the circuits we are in a tough battle with McLaren and Mercedes and we are separated with minimal intervals, which allows you to earn extra points thanks to a good pit stop or the right tactics.

As for organizing the work of the team, we see that if we manage to spend all the days of the weekend without failures, this often makes it possible to earn more points than the opponents who did not succeed. And we pay special attention to that.