“2021 more “challenging” for Aston Martin after F1 rules changes” said Stroll

Lance Stroll admits that Formula One’s new aero restrictions have made this year’s season more difficult than expected for his Aston Martin team.

Sebastian Vettel has two podium results for the Silverstone-based team this year, however his runner-up position in Hungary last week is up for appeal because his car did not have enough fuel for post-race checks.

Despite some obvious highlights, Aston Martin is well aware that it did not keep the great momentum it had towards the end of 2020, when it was consistently battling for podiums and winning the Sakhir Grand Prix.

The team has made it clear that the change in floor rules for this season hurt its low-rake car idea far more than its high-rake car competitors, and that left it playing catch up for the early phase of the season.

Stroll agrees that the new regulations have slowed progress the most, but he believes progress has been achieved in the first half of the year.

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“I think it’s been a challenging season for sure,” he said. “It’s not what we were aiming for after the end of last year with the regulation changes.

“We’ve taken a hit in performance, and that’s made the beginning of the season a little bit more challenging.

“But there’s been some positives. I think we’ve made steps forward as a team, and we’ve improved the car since the beginning of the season. There’s still a lot of racing left, so I’m looking forward to it and we’ll see what happens.”

Otmar Szafnauer, the team’s principal, believes that severe homologation limits for 2021 have hampered the team’s ability to recover losses.

“The team have done a wonderful job and they’ve worked tirelessly to try and get some of that downforce loss back,” he said.

“But unfortunately we’re a bit restricted with what we can do due to regulations. We can’t really raise the rear ride height.

“So knowing that, I think they’ve done a good job. We’ve clawed back some of the relative performance that we had, not all of it, but we can’t claw all of it back for two reasons: one, we’re restricted on how much time we can actually spend on this year’s car, because it comes at the expense of next year’s car, and two, our hands are tied when it comes to lifting the rear ride height. We can’t do that.”

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Despite these limitations, Szafnauer believes that Aston Martin can get more out of its car for the remainder of the 2021 season.

“We’re going to improve this car little bit by little bit, but more by understanding it as opposed to bringing pretty big upgrades,” he added.

“Then the team back at base is focused on ’22. I think they’ve done a wonderful job getting the car to where it is now. I mean almost every part that’s been licked by the wind has been changed.”

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