For Aston Martin this is a very important day. In fact, the new course opens given by the arrival at Silverstone of Fernando Alonso and, above all, by the presentation of the AMR23, the all-green single-seater that will be fielded in the 2023 Formula 1 World Championship.
A declaration of intent that is always very strong, that of Aston Martin. It is certainly not for everyone to replace a driver of the talent of Sebastian Vettel – who retired at the end of last season – with one of the caliber of Fernando Alonso.
The Spaniard will be the cornerstone on which the British team owned by Lawrence Stroll will base all its hopes both this year and next. Fernando, in fact, will be the spearhead driver of the team after signing a multi-year contract.
Also this year, as in 2022, Aston Martin has preferred to give importance to fans and the media by presenting a single-seater, the AMR23, very similar to the one that will take to the track in the pre-season tests in Sakhir, Bahrain.
Communication, nowadays, is always very important and certainly the choice to physically show a real car can only give an excellent image to the team, from every point of view.
95% different from the progenitor. This is how Dan Fallows, technical director of Aston Martin, had defined the AMR23. And in effect, the new single-seater from Silverstone comes in a very different guise from the AMR22.
A new front wing, a completely different nose, new bellies with a much more aggressive design and a new bonnet combined with a redesigned airscope compared to last season. In short, a non-conservative car. Aston Martin knows that it must immediately do much better than last year and the path traced with the AMR23 is more than clear.
“The design team has been adamant in addressing these regulations without compromise,” he said. “We want to move up the grid and start challenging the front teams, and you can’t do that by sitting down and being conservative.”
Aston Martin 23
Photo by: Aston Martin Racing
“The AMR23 is a significant evolution of the car that we refined in the second half of 2022 and that we have improved in every critical area. It optimizes the solutions that we felt could offer us the most performance and embodies the common vision that we have embraced and built together over the last few months”.
The new single-seater has maintained some of the strong points of the 2022 single-seater, integrated with the new solutions devised by the group of designers directed by Fallows. The arrival of Fernando Alonso was a further boost for a team that was already very ambitious in itself, but facts count more than intentions and at Silverstone they must have grasped this very well after the last 2 seasons.
The team directed by Mike Krack has the ambition to do much better than last season. 2022 was complicated, made up of ups and downs: no podium on the scoresheet and just 55 points overall which relegated the team to seventh place in the Constructors’ standings.
If Alonso is the breaking point with respect to the recent past, Lance Stroll represents that of continuity. The Canadian rider, son of the team leader who took over Force India a few years ago, will be in his third season with the British brand. He will have to guarantee a constant performance to help the team in its recovery.
2023, the year of substantial stability as regards the technical regulations – recalling the changes to the bottoms of the single-seaters desired by the FIA to try to reduce the phenomenon of porpoising – has led the Aston Martin design group to make very precise choices, adopting solutions who have found luck on other single-seaters, but also trying to perfect ideas they had and implemented on the AMR22 and which gave character and identity to last year’s single-seater.
Lawrence Stroll, boss of Aston Martin, said: “The winter has been long, but it has been very nice. We have pushed hard to build the AMR23 and we can’t wait to get started. We are building the new team factory which will be something never seen before in F1, just as we are working hard on our range of road cars.”
“We can’t wait to fight for the world titles in the future. Our project is to take one step a year, but do it constantly, to get to fight for the titles in a reasonable time. To win you need: great people, great design and construction processes. But also great material to do all of this. These are the three cornerstones of a brand’s success. It’s the same thing in Formula 1 too”.
“We have all the ingredients to do well and, if someone is missing, it will only be a matter of time, because we are working on it. We are working to have all the ingredients needed to reach our goals”.
