Stroll: ‘More opportunities to develop with the new car’
Lance Stroll has said he believes there are more opportunities to develop with the new version of the AMR22 than its predecessor.
Aston Martin revealed a host of upgrades to their car ahead of the Spanish Grand Prix and while many pointed out the similarities between that and Red Bull’s car, the two teams’ form could hardly be different.
Red Bull continue challenging for podiums and race victories while Sebastian Vettel’s 10th-placed finish in Monaco is the team’s only point since their upgrades came.
It is shaping into another disappointing season for Aston Martin, who have yet to hit the heights of their Racing Point days since their rebrand. Most importantly perhaps, they seem to be moving further and further away from team owner Lawrence Stroll’s stated goal of challenging for race wins.
There is positivity within the team though and Lance Stroll believes the updated version of the AMR22 provides them with more opportunities to improve it than they had with the previous edition.
“I think that with the modified AMR22 there are many more opportunities than the previous version,” the 23-year-old said, as reported by motorsport.com.
“With the launch version we were competitive in some races, like Imola and also in Miami. In fact, in Florida we went in Q3 and also in the points.”
The boys in green in their natural habitat. 💚 pic.twitter.com/b7BE9UC2vz
— Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team (@AstonMartinF1) May 31, 2022
“But with this car, last weekend in Barcelona, we really struggled. So I think it’s the nature of the track that makes us go well or not. Maybe we still have to work on the high speed tracks, we are weaker in that type of track. curves, the fast ones.
“On the low-speed corners, on the other hand, the car appears to be much more competitive and I think there are opportunities to further develop the car in both the slow and fast corners thanks to this new design philosophy. This is very positive.”
It does not sound like Aston Martin’s development will stop where it is, though, with team principal Mike Krack saying earlier in the year that they were targeting an upgrade for every race.
“[We] want to have continuous development and bring updates all the time – sometimes they are a bit bigger, sometimes a bit smaller, but it is important to keep the development alive,” he said, quoted by MotorsportWeek.com.
“We have three main points we are working on. One is aero, the most important one. Second is car weight, very important as well.
“And the third is how we can provide better feedback [from the car] to our drivers that goes into the suspension, into the steering, these kinds of things, the set-up of the car.
“We need to try and give the drivers a better feel of the car so they can extract more from it.”