The Silverstone based outfit has become the first team to test a new era Formula 1 challenger on a racetrack after their Aston Martin AMR22 enjoyed an outing at the hands of Canadian Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel in the famed British circuit that shares their hometown name.
It’s official; the new era of Formula 1 is now upon us as the Aston Martin AMR22 has become the first 2022-spec challenger to take to the racetrack after the sport’s arguably biggest regulation overhaul in its history.
The team that adorns the classic British Racing Green has even been kind enough to cut snippets of a video so we can get to grips with how vastly different looking challengers will look to anything we have become accustomed to in the past few years.
Less fuss means less aero and with the simplified barge boards feeding into the floor combined with the sleeker looking front and rear wings, the 2022-spec cars should provide more wheel to wheel racing at the cost of all-out lap times.
The two most significant visual changes to the new regulations are the height of the front wings which aren’t millimetres off the ground like before while 18-inch rims have replaced the previous 13-inch derivatives. This should in theory reduce the amount of tyre flex while cornering which allows for rapid changes of movement while being consistent for the drivers’ to predict.
Lance Stroll stated after his session behind the wheel that the new designs are: “very different and they behave very differently” while being hopeful for closer racing and tighter margins between teams based on his initial impressions.
We can expect to see more of the same at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya on February 23 for pre-season running where teams will be able to collect significantly more data before the racing officially kicks off. With no benchmark on previous performances for the 2022-spec cars, this season will excitedly commence on a clean slate for all teams meaning it’s anybody’s game at this point.
