Aston Martin technical director Dan Fallows says that the upgrade package the team has introduced in Hungary is mainly intended to improve the consistency of the AMR24 ss well as adding performance.
The Silverstone outfit had a difficult season relative to 2023, and appears to have lost its way since an earlier package of upgrades was introduced at Imola in May.
For Hungary the team has a revised floor, diffuser, beam wing and further modifications to a front wing that was first seen at the British GP.
Fernando Alonso ran the new package throughout Friday in Budapest, finishing FP2 in 10th place, while Lance Stroll only used it in the second session.
“Some of it is our kind of normal iterative development,” said Fallows of the updates. “We like to bring things to most races we can. We’ve got a lot of people doing a huge amount of work to try and sort of add performance to the car as we go along.”
“But there’s no secret that we do have some characteristics of the car that we’re not particularly happy with. We want to make the car much more consistent.”
“We’ve seen that we have sort of glimmers of good performance, whether that is in some conditions, with tyres or qualifying, but it’s that consistency we don’t seem to be able to get back to a variety of circuits.”
“And the drivers are very clear about what it is they need, what it is they want. So we’re on that sort of constant quest to try and to try and bring these things to help them out.”
Regarding the efforts to tackle the consistency problem he added: “It’s been something that we’ve all been working on very hard, the people back in the factory have been working flat out to get this upgrade here.”
“It’s been an incredible effort to get the package that we’ve got here today, which is all about just trying to improve that consistency, the adaptability, the ability to set the car up in those these different conditions and still get a similar performance, similar results.”
“We want to make sure that the drivers when they get corner to corner, they have that consistency there, they feel that confidence in the car, because that confidence is worth so much lap time. And that’s really what we’ve been focusing on.”
“We come across a variety of corner types, circuit types, ambient conditions, there’s so many different variables that go into that. “
“And when you’ve got aerodynamics, with these regulations, which are fundamentally quite sensitive, then it’s very tricky to get it right for all those different conditions.”
“And that’s just something we’re constantly battling with. And we want to make sure that as we add performance to the car, that it doesn’t degrade any of those particular circumstances.”
Fallows stressed that it’s not easy to optimise cars under the current ground effect regulations.
“It’s a complex interaction not only just with the aerodynamics, but the way that works with the suspension, that’s very complicate,” said Aston Martin TD. “The floors are very sensitive in terms of the way they behave.”
“The aerodynamics under the floor are very sensitive to ride height in some conditions. So getting that right is a tricky balance. And the other thing is we’re all trying to drive more performance into the cars. And sometimes you may achieve nine things that you want to do, and then it’s the tenth thing that trips you up.”
“So we’re really trying to make sure that every time we put something on the car, it does exactly what we want in every condition. But sometimes it doesn’t always work out like that.”
Fallows acknowledged that avoiding bouncing is still a key factor with the current cars, as Ferrari has discovered.
“I think it’s always a tricky balance to achieve with these regulations,” said the Aston Martin Techincal Director. “There is a certain amount of interaction of the floor. “
“They are very strong ground effect cars. But you also have to be able to get the suspension system to work with the floor, to avoid that kind of bouncing conditions.”
“I think every car, to some extent, will do it. It’s just a question of how much is acceptable when it starts to become a problem.”
“And it’s not the only factor in designing a floor, or designing the cars, but it’s certainly something you have to be aware of, that if you start introducing too much of it, then it will hurt you.”
