F1 News: Aston Martin Blames Misleading Simulations For Poor Upgrades

Aston Martin was misled by its simulation tools.

Aston Martin revealed that the challenges it faced in Austin with respect to its upgrades were a result of being misled by its simulation tools.

The team had a great start to the 2023 season with Fernando Alonso ticking off several podium finishes. It appeared as if Aston Martin would be Red Bull Racing's primary challenger.

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As the season went by, teams like Mercedes, Ferrari, and McLaren caught up through their performance upgrades while Aston Martin began to fall back due to the lack of the right upgrades. 

Despite several attempts, the Silverstone-based outfit's 'upgrades' actually had devastating side effects of their own which caused the AMR23 F1 car's overall balance to go off track entirely. 

Technical director Dan Fallows revealed ahead of the United States Grand Prix that the team had got to the root cause of the problem. He told the media:

“We can see where we went wrong in terms of upsetting the car balance.

"We’ve understood why that’s hurt our overall performance. Now, it’s a question of making sure that we don’t make the same mistakes again: it’s certainly been a year of learning.”

Through its last batch of upgrades this season, the team looked forward to addressing the problems but the United States Grand Prix weekend had other plans for Aston Martin, one of them being the brake problems in FP1. 

While Alonso's car was reverted to its Qatar-spec for the Grand Prix, Stroll's car with the new upgrades offered the much-needed positive sign that the team was looking for through a P6 finish. 

Aston Martin deputy technical director Eric Blandin revealed that the main issue came from the factory this year in the form of wrong information that caused performance to slump. He said:

“We were led in a certain direction by our simulation tools on the aerodynamic side, and we did follow a path that was just the wrong one.

"I think we have now corrected the issue with the new package.”

When asked if the simulation needed some overhaul, he added:

“You always have to do improvements, constantly. We're always improving our simulation.

"A simulation tool is as good as what you put in the simulation. So, it just understanding better and trying to improve the correlation.”

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Finding The Sweet Spot

While the team rests its future on the new package, performance director Tom McCullough said that the main challenge is to find the sweet spot between cornering speeds and rear ride height optimization. He added:

“Ultimately, with this generation of cars, being strong in low and high-speed corners, from a rear ride height optimisation, is a little bit of a challenge without having porpoising, and how close you get to that. That is still the issue now two years down the road for everyone.

"If you look at our car, it hasn't been particularly strong in high-speed corners and low-speed corners [at the same time]. So, we're unable to do one or the other reasonably well, nearly since the start of the year.

"What we're trying to do is have an envelope that allows us to be strong at both lower ride heights and higher ride heights.

"We have not made the car easier to drive. But the updates that we brought [to Austin] are easier to drive. But you're always balancing that with being fast as well.

"What we're trying to do is just have a car that you can go to 24 races and be competitive at.”