Aston Martin hopes to lead with daring choice: ‘We’ll see if it works in the next twenty races’

Aston Martin engineer Tom McCullough explains why Aston Martin sent one of the clowns to break the curfew so early in the season. According to the engineer, the British team did not do so because of the damage sustained at the Suzuka circuit, but to gain leadership for the further development of the AMR24.

It was surprising that Aston Martin had already chosen to use a joker for the curfew during the fourth Grand Prix of the year, in Japan. Teams receive a so-called joker twice a season to break the curfew, to be allowed to play with the car longer than other teams during a race weekend. Most teams save their jokers to use at the end of the season, but Aston Martin decided to use a joke earlier this year.

Aston Martin broke the curfew

The British racing team sent a joker to make sure the team didn’t have to switch quickly from Fernando Alonso’s car to the new upgrade package for qualifying day at Suzuka. Engineer McCullough explains that the use of the joker was done out of necessity. ‘We never want to do that. But when we looked at the amount of work that needed to be done, it became clear that it was impossible to do everything to make the cars work well and perfectly. There were several parts that had to be attached to the chassis and things like that,” the Aston Martin engineer explained. Motorsport.com.

Team boss Mike Krack added that quality control in particular took a lot of time. ‘You have to take everything off and put it back on. And then, of course, quality control takes more time. What? is everything in the right place? Do all parts fit one hundred percent as they should? If you don’t have the right quality, and you come in the next day and one car is one way, and the other car is measuring something else, that’s the worst that can happen. Quality control is really crazy sometimes: how much you have to check and double check and check again.’

Although Aston Martin took time to ensure quality, the team was quick to implement improvements to the cars. “You’re always trying to get the parts to the track as quickly as possible,” McCullough said. ‘We had a set that we could take (to Japan, ed.), but it was difficult. The next two events are obviously sprint events and we didn’t want to do them in sprint events.”

Aston Martin’s bold choice paid off

So Aston Martin chose Japan, and it paid off. Alonso said he had one of the five best weekends of his career with his sixth place at Suzuka. It also proved that work from the factory translated well into performance on the track and that the AMR24 seems to be a better base for refinement than its predecessor. “I think last year, when we were developing the car, we tried to make a big step forward in the car,” McCullough compares Aston Martin’s current car to last year’s.

‘We have changed the philosophy of the car a bit. The aerodynamics team is currently on a good track of development and it’s just a matter of taking the updates and installing them,” the British engineer said. “I think the design and philosophy of the car has given us the opportunity to deliver performance and we’ve given ourselves the basis to continue to do so. We’ll see in the race the next twenty if it works. But for now the car’s development seems to be on the right track.’