Aston Martin make great strides with DRS, McLaren lag behind

Jaden Diaz
10/03/2024

DRS efficiency was one of the many technical solutions that allowed the Red Bull RB19 to dominate last season. Among many things, this helped Red Bull claim victory in almost every race in 2023. The only exception was in Singapore, won by Carlos Sainz and his Ferrari SF-23.

Their DRS solution is linked to a particular rear-wing concept. According to rivals, it goes in combination with a rear end that works to minimise resistance in a straight line.

Aston Martin very happy with the DRS effect and efficiency of the AMR24 

The AMR24 is a strong evolution of the previous car, with a rather different philosophy. This should allow the Silverstone-based team to guarantee itself a continuously evolving platform.

We are only at the second of twenty-four races, and all the teams are still in that important phase of understanding their cars. In most cases, personnel are working with far more complex machines than in 2024.

“The AMR24 has no major problems in short or high-speed corners. We struggle more in longer turns, where you have a lot of support.

“There are many of them in Bahrain while in Jeddah only the last corner and the 13th,” said Aston Martin performance director Tom McCullough.

Saudi Arabia

The AMR24 proved to be a better-performing car in qualifying than in race pace in Jeddah. However, the fluctuation between low and high-fuel running was far less extreme compared to Bahrain.

Aston Martin’s improved qualifying pace is also thanks to their greatly improved DRS efficiency:

“These are two areas on which we worked really hard last season and during the winter.

“We saw how strong Red Bull was, and getting closer to them in these two areas was one of our main goals,” said Tom McCullough, team performance director.

The Jeddah circuit has three long zones DRS activation zones. A strong delta from the DRS was, therefore, worth a lot of lap time.

“We have a very strong DRS effect, and here there are three straights where you can use DRS in qualifying, which were worth a lot of lap time,” said the English engineer.

“This is one of the reasons why we qualified well.”

McLaren in difficulty: 4 tenths lost in DRS zones alone

Aston Martin improved by eight-tenths on the flying lap compared to last season, with a lot of this gain coming from straight-line speed.

McCullough has explained some of the thinking that goes into making an efficient DRS system:

“For a given level of basic resistance, when you open the DRS, other components also come into play, such as the floor.

“The main plane of the rear wing, the interaction between the beam wing and the floor.

“The interaction with the entire car body, the shape of the bonnet, the air coming out of the cooling vents and how you design your cooling package.”

Last year, some teams created mini working groups to carefully study how Red Bull managed to exploit their DRS so effectively.

Among these was Aston Martin, who brought several upgrades to the AMR23 to improve this area.

“The rear wing we are using now is very similar to some we already had on last year’s car.

“But with the AMR24 we have improved the interaction with the bottom, with the cooling system and with its openings. ” said the English engineer.

While Aston Martin is very pleased with this progress, alarm bells have gone off at McLaren in this area.

The Papaya cars lost four-tenths in the three DRS zones, a gap that would have allowed Piastri and Norris to be able to enter a second and third position in qualifying.

“Without DRS, we could have been much further ahead and closer to Red Bull,” said Lando Norris after qualifying.

This open DRS limitation also created significant problems for Piastri in the race, who remained in the DRS zone for many laps ahead of Lewis Hamilton, managing to pass him.

“It’s not a question of efficiency with the wing closed because our maximum speed is substantially competitive. But as soon as the DRS opens, we lose a lot of time,” said Andrea Stella, McLaren team principal.

Author: Piergiuseppe Donadoni

Translation: Jaden Diaz-Ndisang

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