Andrew Green terms the 2022 change as the biggest in his F1 career as he adds on the challenges plus elaborates on parts taken from Mercedes.
The 2022 F1 season sees brand new technical regulations in a bid to even up and bring the field closer together. The new changes mean 18-inch tyres, complete with wheel covers, simpler and easier bodywork, front wings, along with a ground effect floor.
Speaking after the launch of Aston Martin’s AMR22, Green spoke about how intense it has been for the team given the limited time available to prepare for the new regulations. For all ten constructors, it has been a highly pressurised period with a very tight schedule available to prepare for the upcoming rule changes.
Green, Chief Technical Officer at Aston Martin has been in F1 since the initial incarnation of Aston Martin; Jordan Grand Prix in 1991. This is a guy who has been there, seen it and done and for him it marks a huge change to the sport.
“By far the biggest change in regulations, I think the sport has ever seen,” said Green to written media. “My career goes back to 1991 and it trumps anything since 1991 and I think it trumps everything as far as F1 is concerned. Like I said, it’s a completely new concept but a completely new way of approaching the regulations as well.
“It’s been a massive challenge. It’s been exciting for sure because there is so much to do and so much to learn and we are only just starting this exploration of these regulations. We have only really been attacking them and looking at them and developing within them since January last year, so we haven’t had a lot of time,” summed up Green.
With the new season approximately five weeks away, in hindsight, for Green and his fellow Chief Technical Officers, it has been over 12 months non-stop activity to get to grips with what will happen in 2022. As it stands they are still working and to an extent ran the 2021 season as well as worked on the 2022 alongside before it even kicked off.
“If you think we started in January last year as the first time the wind tunnel runs and the development start in anger, we had to be releasing a chassis six months later. So it was intense, it really was intense. It was a lot of work and then we are trying to combine that with trying to compete in a season last year as well, which made things even harder.
“On top of that we are trying to expand. We are trying to get ourselves aligned on our ambitions for our five-year plan, so the expansion is a difficult process to manage as well. It needs managing, it takes away resource from what would purely be development, so all in all, it’s been really-really a challenging year.
“It was the most intense winter that I have ever experienced and I am really glad and proud on what we have done and achieved as a team to get this car ready. We are the first team to run the 2022 car and I am really proud of that,” summed up Green.
Added to this, Green says the team needed the new car ready so they could alleviate any maladies before the season began. While most of the things were done in-house, Aston Martin are once again to take up the gearbox and rear suspension from Mercedes alongside the power unit as the technical officer confirmed.
When asked further as to why they did not tak more parts as per the FIA regulations, Green noted the difficulty of alignment especially with regards to the front-end which has to work in tandem with the chassis that they design in-house. The rear-end works better as it comes with the gearbox package and previous attempts of doing own suspension with Mercedes gearbox didn’t work.
“Its similar to what we have done in previous years, its gearbox and suspension,” revealed Green. “The reason for less parts…affecting the rear end from Mercedes, it comes with a nice lean package. It is aligned, we have been through just buying the gearbox, putting our own suspension on it, the two fighting each other for too long.
“So the right thing to do is just to have the suspension on the gearbox that the gearbox is being designed for. It really was as simple as that, trying to give us freedom everywhere else. If we looked at the other areas, the front suspension is one which we could have gone for but then you are trying to align a chassis to a suspension system that you get late.
“You have to wait for the suspension system to be defined for us to be able to define our own chassis, that wasn’t something that we could really consider especially with the timeframe and time scale we have. We then would be looking at, we would have to find a chassis quicker than Mercedes because we would get the information later than them. And we are not in the position to do that, so that’s the reason,” summed up Green.
For Aston Martin, they like all the other teams are excited, enthusiastic and probably somewhat about what this completely “new look” season will bring for them. A good season last year which could have gone better somewhat. Their target is to bridge the gap, small that it is to Alpine and AlphaTauri and that will make for an interesting fight for fifth place or even greater perhaps.
Alpine and AlphaTauri have been winners in the last two Grand Prix seasons, Aston Martin of course won as Racing Point also but a good solid start to the campaign might have them thinking and for the nostalgic fan, Aston Martin with their Racing Heritage as a Grand Prix winner would certainly put a smile on the faces of many fans.
Here’s James Key about Aston Martin
Here’s Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll testing AMR22
Here’s AlphaTauri on parts from Red Bull
Here’s Haas on deal with Ferrari