Aston Martin says their execution has been working well even though they have been brutal on themselves, with Red Bull proving to be the benchmark.
Aston Martin even in their past names has been an underdog outfit for long where they have been praised for their execution during the weekends. That is key as well for F1 teams to put themselves in the frame to fight the top outfits.
They know Red Bull is the benchmark team whether on pace side or performance. “I do think the team, as you say, has generally executed weekends well in the past, we were very well known for that,” said Aston Martin’s Tom McCullough. “Now we’re obviously, on top of that, trying to design and develop a car to go fight at the front.
“The rear wing in Suzuka last year was a manufacturer problem where that part failed. We had a power unit issue in Jeddah, it was an exhaust actually. These things do happen. As a team, if we want to fight right at the front, you’ve got to be perfect weekend in, weekend out. And that’s the example made by Red Bull, from the reliability side, the operational side, they’ve not failed to win many races in 2023.
“That’s just the standard we’ve got to get to. Rather than just focusing on one area, there are a lot of areas where we need to improve small margins just to be better. We know if we give our drivers a good car, they will give us good results. So that is what we have to foucus on doing.
“A lot of the issues that we discuss aren’t issues for the guys at the track, those are parts coming from the factory that have had manufacturing problem, it is not something like a ginger trouble last minute, an exhaust has failed or a rear wing beam had a crack and a failure,” summed up McCullough, who notes about being brutal on themselves.
The 2023 F1 season was up and down where the downers did cost them points and places too. While Red Bull is the benchmark, Aston Martin knows that their fight at the moment is with Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren and they are the ones they are chasing.
“I think pace wise Red Bull has been the standout this year and hats off to them, they are the benchmark of sort to be chasing,” said McCullough. “After that there are three teams and ourselves who have been on average been real close. Alpine, to give them credit, they have come back well at the end of the year as well with some solid pace too.
“Really fighting at the heels of Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren, obviously, McLaren have had really strong races back end of the year. That’s the zone we are in, fighting hard, pace of the car and also execution, that has been key to that as well. We’re brutal with ourselves, and very understanding-led as opposed to results-led.
“We came away from Melbourne and finished third and fourth, so you can say: ‘Well done’ and pat yourself on the back, but we were clearly the fourth fastest team at that circuit with those characteristics, and that was race three. We took a look at all that data, we understood why and that’s all part of the feed into the development of the car.
“That is the reality. We are brutal post-race weekend, it doesn’t matter what result we’ve got, it is ‘Where are we good, where are we bad and what do we need to work on?’,” summed up McCullough, as Mike Krack concurred with him and they are pushing for performance to put themselves in the big league.
“It is safety, reliability and then operations first. With the operational side, if we do not manage to be at 100%, which we must in each session and each event over the whole year, if we do not manage that, we cannot extract the maximum performance, be it the driver, car, set-up or engineer,” said Krack.
“We must guarentee that we have this box ticked and we have failed to do so a couple of occasions this year, but we know we need to have it right. You can ask in the garage if he is pushing the topic, he is. Because we know that we have to get this right before we do something else.”
Here’s F1 2023 teams’ tier order: https://formularapida.net/f1-2023-teams-categorised-in-tier-system-for-their-performances/
Here’s F1 2023 drivers’ tier order: https://formularapida.net/f1-2023-drivers-categorised-in-tier-system-for-their-performances/
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