After a three-week break, Formula One returns this weekend, and Aston Martin’s strategy engineers have been analysing ‘historic data and recent car performance to predict the key factors that could determine the result on Sunday’.
Aston Martin returned to the Formula One World Championship on March 28, after 61 years, at the 2021 Bahrain Grand Prix.
Lance Stroll managed to take the final points position of the season-opening race, meanwhile, an unfortunate collision with Alpine’s Esteban Ocon at Turn One on lap 45, combined with dissolving tyre life, ended Sebastian Vettel’s hopes of finishing in the top 10, going on to finish 15th.
Now looking ahead to the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix this weekend at Imola, the team has used the three-week break to “look at the data and understand where [they] can improve with the AMR21”.
This year’s circuit features a longer DRS zone, so fans can expect more overtaking action this time out.
Imola also has the highest pit-time loss of the season at around 28 seconds, so this pushes teams towards a one-stop strategy and makes any unplanned pit-stops detrimental to lap times.
Speaking ahead of this weekend’s action, Sebastian Vettel said:
“I’m excited to get going this weekend. It’s been good to have that little bit of an extra gap between these first two races – this year’s calendar won’t always be so forgiving – but that just gave us an extra opportunity to look at the data and understand where we need to improve the AMR21.
“As a track, Imola is a very different challenge to Bahrain: it’s a track that you can really attack, so I’m looking forward to it.”
Meanwhile, Lance Stroll said: “Imola was such a great challenge last year. It’s an incredibly fast circuit with so little run-off – the balance between risk and reward is immense, so it’s incredibly satisfying when you get it right.
“As a team, I think we all wanted more last time out in Bahrain, so we’re all treating Imola as a fresh opportunity.
“We’ve seen that there’s a bunch of teams that are all extremely closely matched – so getting out of the blocks cleanly and running smoothly in every session will be vital if we want to make a difference.”
FP3 kicks off tomorrow morning at the rescheduled time of 10:00 am (Irish time).
