The name Aston Martin returned to the F1 grid for the 2021 season after they first competed during the 1960s and remained as a title sponsor for Red Bull Racing from 2018 to 2020. But Aston Martin didn’t enter F1 as a brand-new team. The former Racing Point was rebranded as Aston Martin for 2021 after Canadian billionaire businessman Lawrence Stroll purchased a 16.7% stake in the British car maker with his consortium of investors. As a part of this purchase, Lawrence Stroll got to transform his Racing Point team into the official works team for Aston Martin in Formula 1. With the rebranding, Aston Martin drafted in four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel to drive for them in 2021, while the team retained Lance Stroll as their other driver who is also the son of Lawrence Stroll. The livery was changed from BWT pink to British racing green with a brand-new title sponsor Cognizant. With a fresh new start and a world champion driver leading the team, the expectations were high for the team to perform better for the 2021 season with their car AMR21.
The name Aston Martin returned to the F1 grid for the 2021 season after they first competed during the 1960s and remained as a title sponsor for Red Bull Racing from 2018 to 2020. But Aston Martin didn’t enter F1 as a brand-new team. The former Racing Point was rebranded as Aston Martin for 2021 after Canadian billionaire businessman Lawrence Stroll purchased a 16.7% stake in the British car maker with his consortium of investors. As a part of this purchase, Lawrence Stroll got to transform his Racing Point team into the official works team for Aston Martin in Formula 1. With the rebranding, Aston Martin drafted in four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel to drive for them in 2021, while the team retained Lance Stroll as their other driver who is also the son of Lawrence Stroll. The livery was changed from BWT pink to British racing green with a brand-new title sponsor Cognizant. With a fresh new start and a world champion driver leading the team, the expectations were high for the team to perform better for the 2021 season with their car AMR21.
The team faced a huge challenge in adapting the car for a minor regulation change that was implemented for the 2021 season by FIA. The regulatory body of F1 introduced a new regulation change which forced the teams to have an exclusion zone on the floor to reduce the amount of downforce generated by the cars. This meant the teams couldn’t generate huge amounts of downforce by experimenting with floor designs with slots and cuts to seal the underside of the floor. This particularly affected low-rake concept cars like Mercedes and Aston Martin.
The teams and FIA agreed to use the same cars in the 2021 season that were used in the previous season. This was to help the teams better prepare for the delayed new technical regulations that were supposed to be implemented in 2021 and were delayed until 2022 due to the Covid pandemic. The reason Aston Martin found this very difficult to adapt to this technical change in 2021 was because they are not a works team, and borrow power units and parts such as gearbox and rear suspension components are from Mercedes. Because of this reason the previous outfit of this team, Racing Point cleverly reverse-engineered an exact copy of the 2019 championship-winning W10 car of Mercedes for the 2020 F1 season. This was possible because both teams share most of the important components of their cars.
This created a huge controversy in the paddock. And the FIA was forced to introduce new rules to stop this from happening again. Since the 2020 car of Racing Point was not developed by them originally and was carried onto the 2021 season while adapting to the newly introduces exclusion zone technical directive, they faced a huge challenge in understanding the aerodynamics of the car and making it fast. The floor of F1 cars is very important and is sensitive to even small changes. Originally Mercedes also struggled because of this exclusion zone technical directive. But they solved the problem and made it work, because it was their originally developed concept, so they were able to understand and find a solution to the problem
Amidst all these difficulties Sebastian Vettel scored the first podium for the team in Azerbaijan grand prix with a second-place finish. And another second-place finish in Hungary. But Sebastian Vettel’s car was disqualified from the race because the Stuarts were unable to extract sufficient fuel from his car during the post-race scrutineering. During the 2021 season, Aston Martin only finished 12 times inside points.
With brand new regulations for the 2022 season, the team was excited again to perform better in the new era of Formula 1. But the AMR-22 didn’t meet the expectations of fans. Same as most of the teams, Aston Martin suffered with proposing. A phenomenon that made cars move up and down like a dolphin. This was due to the aerodynamics of the car stalling and start working again at high speeds continuously.
Because of this, the team had to run the car at a higher ride height to avoid proposing, and the car also had a very narrow setup window. This meant the team had little in their hand to adjust and adapt the car to the requirements of different types of circuits and the team faced another setback when their lead driver Sebastian Vettel tested positive for Covid-19 and missed the first two rounds in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Even after Sebastian returned, the team’s performance didn’t go in an upwards trajectory. But they surprised everyone in the grid during the Spanish GP by bringing a very different B-Spec car, which seemed to have lots of similarities in Aerodynamics components with that year’s RB-18 of Red Bull.
Especially the down-washing sidepod, floor, engine cover, and the turning veins in front of the venturi tunnel etc. Everyone started speculating that Aston Martin somehow got hold of the data for Red Bull design from former Red Bull employees. This story got traction because Aston Martin recruited key Red Bull aerodynamics department employees. But Aston Martin claimed they already had this car concept under development parallel to their old concept, and this is just a coincidence. So, the FIA got involved and did an investigation and confirmed that Aston Martin had sufficient proof that they had originally developed this concept on their own, and there was no proof of data theft. Even after the B-Spec car was introduced, the team didn’t perform up to the level it expected. But the brand-new concept showed some positive signs that the team was heading in the right direction. While this was happening their star driver Sebastian Vettel announced his retirement from the sport completely ahead of the Hungarian GP. But days after Vettel’s retirement news, Aston Martin announced that 2-time world champion Fernando Alonso will replace Vettel’s seat in the team for a multiyear deal.
Now with everything in place, Aston Martin hoped for a better season in 2023. Finally, the magic happened, and the team got more than they expected. The team showed a good pace during the testing, which was a positive sign for a team that struggled so much for the past two years. After arriving for the first grand prix for the 2023 season in Bahrain, Fernando was excited and was very positive about how the car was performing in free practice sessions. For Sunday’s race, Fernando started in the 5th position and Lance in the 8th in the grid. On the race, Fernando blasts past everyone in front of him except both Red Bulls. And scored the season’s first podium on his debut for Aston Martin.
Since then, Fernando has scored a total of 6 podiums with four 3rd place finishes and two 2nd place finishes. And he came close to victory in Monaco GP. But a bad strategy call by the team left him with a second-place finish and the team is developing their car at a fast rate. And currently, they have got the second-best car in the grid behind Red Bull, but the team is confident that it will be able to close the gap to Red Bull before the season ends and will challenge the two Red Bulls for race victories. Now the team currently sits in third place in the constructor’s championship with 154 points in the bag. Fernando Alonso is in third place in the driver’s championship with 117 points, only 9 points short of Sergio Perez with a dominant Red Bull car. Even with two wins and two podium finishes for this season, it seems Perez is currently struggling with the car to extract the maximum performance out of that RB-19. If this trend continues there is a high possibility that Fernando Alonso will surpass Perez in the standings.
Even with all this success, Aston Martin is facing, it is worth noticing that only Fernando Alonso can extract the best out of their car, while Lance Stroll is struggling to match the performance of Alonso. He has scored only 37 points this season compared to Fernando’s 117. And 8th in the driver’s standing. This also has raised concern over Lance’s place in the team. He is a good driver. He has proved that on several occasions. But that doesn’t come as an excuse for his poor performance this season. Especially driving the second-best car on the grid and finishing way behind Fernando in races while Fernando had constant podium finishes. Lance Stroll is the reason that Aston Martin is third in the constructors standing behind Mercedes. Even though Mercedes is comparatively slower than Aston Martin, the consistent performances of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell have moved their team up to second in the constructor’s standing. With the current momentum Aston Martin has built, there is a high possibility it will fight for the championship next year with big teams like Red Bull, Mercedes, and Ferrari. When that day comes and Lance can’t deliver, there will be questions raised towards him and his place in the team.
With all this success that the team is having this year, Aston Martin has also signed a deal with Honda to supply power units for the team starting in 2026. This move will make Aston Martin a works team.
Currently, Aston Martin is using power units provided by Mercedes AMG HPP, which prevents them from making free design choices of their own. And they are forced to build their car around the supplied power units. Being a works team, they will have no constraints over their design choices, combined with their new facility and wind tunnel that Aston Martin is building, everyone is expecting Aston Martin to become a force to reckon with by the 2026 season.
