Aston Martin has shared the home simulator for Sebastian Vettel, as the German speaks on how he sees the preparation for 2022 F1 season.
In an exclusive post by Aston Martin, the F1 team has shared a simulator which Vettel uses at his home, which they started setting-up during the 2021 season to help the German learn the new tracks with a real feel of a simulator found in factories.
Aston Martin elaborated on the set-up they have which includes three screens and physical parts from the AMR21 where the design helps him with a realistic view. There’s a Honey Ryder decal behind the steering wheel along with AMR21’s wing mirrors and headrest.
Vettel has his race seat fitted along with seatbelts, as Aston Martin helped in creating the metal framework where the simulator sits. Matt Tomalin, who works as the Senior Garage Equipment Designer, helped in the build and set-up of the simulator at Vettel’s home.
The initial discussions started in April 2021 with the construction starting in July. The simulator was ready to be shipped to Vettel’s home in Switzerland by September after he provided the necessary feedback in August to find any issues with it.
Aston Martin notes the help of simulator designer and manufacturer Pro Sim too, who supported them in calibration of a braking system close to a real F1 car. The set-up now helps Vettel to keep working even when at home which lessens his travel to the UK.
The simulator certainly came handy for the 2022 F1 season with brand new cars which forced almost every driver on the grid to test several driving styles and situations in the virtual world before trying the best ones on track to be certain about things.
But for now Vettel is not sure how Aston Martin will do after the pre-season F1 tests. He hopes that the field is closer and that his team is also in the mix. “I cannot be more optimistic [than last year],” said Vettel when asked if he is more optimistic after 2022 tests than he was after the 2021 testing.
“I think it’s very difficult at the minute to understand where everybody is. Which yeah, leads to optimism because we hope that we are somewhere in the mix. If the field is closer together, then that’s good news. But definitely a lot of work ahead of us. We don’t know how much the others are struggling. But we had issues.
“I think we got on top of most of them as much as we can and still learn about the car and understand and going forwards. I think we know the direction we want to go. But like always, you don’t have the time that you always want to. That’s why these laps are so important, and every outing is important,” summed up Vettel.
Elaborating more on how physical the cars are now than before, Vettel reckons it is not as much now as it was when he started out. That is mainly down to the weight of the car and also the races having re-fueling where every stint was more sprint than marathon.
“It depends, obviously I would say when I started, it was very tough,” said Vettel. “But it was also the very beginning of my career. So the cars were very different back then. We didn’t have the peak downforce that we have now. But the cars were a lot lighter, a lot more agile, we didn’t have to cover the whole race distance with the same amount well, with the with one filling of the tank.
“So we had re-fueling which ends up more like a sprint several times. It was different. I think it was tougher back then, because you could really push. Now the gap between qualifying lap times and race lap times, we have nearly talking about 10 seconds. So you obviously go slower, you’re losing a lot of lap time in the corner. So I think that was probably tougher back then where you could push yourself and the car a lot harder.”
Here’s some photos from Aston Martin:
Here’s the lap count of Aston Martin drivers for both tests
Here’s Sebastian Vettel being forced to remove flag from helmet