Aston Martin knows where improvement needs to come: 'We need that now'
F1 News
- Savannah Lenz
Aston Martin hopes to take more strides forward with their new team principal, Andy Cowell. Another change that is soon to be revealed will be their new car for the 2025 season, which is set to debut in February.
A complete overhaul seems to be necessary for the 2025 car, as Lance Stroll said there was "not much" that needed to be carried over. On the topic of improvements, he said, "We need to add downforce in all speed ranges. And make the car more drivable.".
After receiving a question from GPBlog, Stroll reflected on 2024 and why he thinks Aston Martin missed out on the likes of other teams such as McLaren and Mercedes. "We just haven't developed the car, we haven't put any performance on the car."
Stroll compares 2024 to 2023
That was a similar criticism made to those in 2023. Both Stroll and his teammate Fernando Alonso have had similar issues and despite managing to be on podiums in 2023, they did not reach any in 2024. "In 2023, we came out with a good car, but we also struggled with similar issues to this year where we were fighting top five and stuff every week for the first nine races, and that's when we scored a lot of points. And then at the end of the year, the second half of the year, we struggled."
"Also, last year, we weren't as competitive as teams like McLaren at the beginning of the season. And then we found ourselves kind of in that midfield battle at the end of last year. When we started beginning of last year, we were in the front of the field."
He concluded, "So it was just a similar issue this year where we weren't as competitive as the beginning of last year, the beginning of this year. But we just haven't added the performance that we needed to add to the car to stay in the position where we started the season."
This article was written in collaboration with Ludo van Denderen.
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