Aston Martin on verge of another development boost ahead of expected Adrian Newey arrival

Aston Martin’s new wind tunnel is on the verge of beginning its working life, coinciding with the expected arrival of Adrian Newey at the Silverstone-based squad.

As part of the facilities and factory revitalisation Aston Martin has carried out in recent years, its brand new state-of-the-art wind tunnel has begun the process of being commissioned ahead of entering full use over the winter.

Luca Furbatto: McLaren can see the benefit of new wind tunnel

Last year, McLaren’s brand-new wind tunnel at its factory in Woking came online as the first new facility of its kind in Formula 1 since first building up the tunnel in 2004.

This move has paid off handsomely for McLaren as its upgrades to the MCL38 have worked immaculately, unlocking the potential of the MCL38 to turn it from competitive into perhaps the fastest and most versatile on the grid entering the closing stages of the F1 2024 season.

Aston Martin’s new wind tunnel is about to enter service, with the constructed facility now in the hands of the team to begin the process of commissioning before coming fully online over the coming months and ahead of F1 2025.

Luca Furbatto, engineering director of the Aston Martin team, spoke about the benefits of having a state-of-the-art wind tunnel available, saying technology has moved on quite a lot since two decades ago – as McLaren today appears to be discovering with its brand-new tunnel.

“If I’m not wrong, the last wind tunnel that was developed was 20 years ago, and so there’s a lot of technology change [since then],” Furbatto said over the Italian Grand Prix weekend.

“So imagine, in terms of flow visualisation, there are tools nowadays that didn’t exist. Arguably, you could take a wind tunnel of 20 years ago and upgrade it with new technology, but it’s never the same as starting with a brand-new one. How would you do it? What’s the best out there?”

Asked whether it’s too simplistic to say McLaren’s huge step forward this year is down to the brand-new wind tunnel at its factory, Furbatto said it is likely benefitting Woking.

“McLaren is quite interesting because of their wind tunnel… I think I was there at the time, I think they did it in 1997 or ’98 and, at one point, they stopped using it and went to Cologne, and they took the opportunity to redo it,” he said.

“They went back a couple of years ago, and I think they probably can see the benefit right now.”

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While McLaren has gone through that phase of improving facilities and infrastructure, Aston Martin’s investment into its own facilities continues as the eyes of the F1 world focus solely on the Silverstone-based squad over the coming days.

As well as the wind tunnel beginning commissioning, former Red Bull chief technical officer and F1’s most successful car designer Adrian Newey is expected to be announced at Aston Martin after reportedly signing a new long-term deal to work for Lawrence Stroll’s increasingly strong team.

Should Newey be announced, as is expected on Tuesday, he will thus begin work with a team boasting the very latest and best wind tunnel in Formula 1, with Furbatto explaining the focus of bringing the tunnel online will be for F1 2026 and the new regulations.

“The commissioning is to make sure the floor hitting the model [of the car] is what we want and so on, and that will take maybe two or three months to get sorted,” he said.

“It will be ideally suited to start the development of the 2026 car, which is allowed from January ’25. I think the ’25 car will continue to be developed but it’s a fine balance between what you put in [for] ’26 and what you put in ’25.

“There is a limit on the size of the wind tunnel model you can run, which is 60 percent, which is what we’re running at the moment, but, at the moment, we’re using the Mercedes wind tunnel, which is a good tunnel but is obviously not in the same headquarters. And we tend to run at the weekends, which is suboptimal…”

As well as the good news regarding the tunnel for Aston Martin, and the expected arrival of Adrian Newey, it’s also been reported that Aston Martin has secured fresh investment through a minor shareholding sale to two US-based investment companies.

Is an aging F1 wind tunnel the cause of Red Bull’s competitive issues?

Furbatto’s comments come at a time when the correlation between wind tunnel data and the real world appears to be having very real effects on the competitive ranking in Formula 1.

Red Bull’s RB18 and RB19 may have dominated F1, but this year’s RB20 has become increasingly uncompetitive as upgrades brought to the car have sent the team in the wrong direction when it comes to feel and balance for the drivers.

A fix for the development path Red Bull has embarked on has yet to be found, but team boss Christian Horner has explained how the data from its wind tunnel isn’t matching up with the real track data – something which Furbatto believes is being exacerbated by the ground effect cars exposing weaknesses in existing wind tunnel configurations.

“Well, it’s an interesting question. So I think we suffered a little bit last year and this year, it’s not easy to develop the current generation of cars,” he said.

“Obviously, ground effect, you need to run very close to the ground, but it’s very difficult to test in the wind tunnel and so, depending on the map you’re running, for example, something might look a bit better in the wind tunnel so you do it, but then maybe you bring it to the track, and then [you get] a bit of bouncing.

“Then you need to lift the car up, and then you lose what you have gained.

“So you end up fitting the old package because it’s better. I think quite a few teams are falling into that trap – it’s not super easy to develop, it’s a technical challenge.”

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