Aston Martin has expectedly unveiled a substantial upgrade package ahead of this weekend’s Formula 1 Canadian Grand Prix.
The previous two rounds witnessed Aston Martin’s closest rivals in the championship – Mercedes and Ferrari – bring a raft of new parts, but Fernando Alonso promised after the Spanish Grand Prix the team would strike back in the development race in Montreal.
The Silverstone outfit’s AMR23 charger has since undergone an aggressive change in the area concerning the sidepods. The car’s latest iteration now features a noticeably wider bodywork structure and a bigger undercut than was previously seen on the specification it had run since launch.
Alongside its revised sidepods, Aston Martin will also trial a new floor in Friday practice as it bids to regain the second place it lost to Mercedes in the Constructors’ Championship at the previous round.
Speaking of Mercedes, the German marque has further modifications to its already heavily revamped W14 this weekend. The Brackley team confirms it has removed the outer tip winglet from its sidepod wing, with the overall aim of improving the flow to the rear of the car whilst reducing drag.
Elsewhere, Red Bull has maintained its position of continuing to prioritise only adding minor developments to its dominant RB19 package. The championship leaders have subtly re-profiled the front wing in order to extract more load from the elements.
Alpine’s attempts to close on the leading pack see it continue to invest in a process of regular updates. The Anglo-French side will have a new rear wing, targeted at reducing drag, plus the availability of an updated rear suspension. But with rain on the horizon, the team might elect to not run its new rear wing later in the weekend.
Williams announced earlier in the week it would be introducing wholesale changes. The Grove-based team have manufactured a new rear suspension, rear corner and rear wing endplate. Further updates have occurred in the floor body, engine cover, sidepod inlet and the halo of the FW45.
The British side hopes the vast changes will address the downturn in performance it’s suffered in recent rounds and encourage it to be a more permanent fixture in the F1 midfield. However, as was already confirmed by the team, the updates will only be featured on the car of Alex Albon.
Despite developing a new rear wing and beam wing assembly for this weekend to improve the efficiency of its troubled MCL60 car on a circuit that necessitates good top speed, McLaren is unlikely to stray away from the race day issues that have hampered its competitiveness during 2023.
Alfa Romeo will hope to follow up a promising showing in Barcelona by notching more points on a track where both cars finished inside the top 10 in last year’s running. The Italian marque has redesigned the cooling outlet for its rear brake ducts in order to deal with the heavy demands placed on the brakes by the stop-start nature of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
Finally, like Alfa Romeo, Haas has made changes specifically to tackle this circuit. The American outfit will have an updated rear wing to improve efficiency, with an alteration also made to the cooling louvres to ensure its VF-23 doesn’t suffer from the type of overheating issues that can typically arise if temperatures soar in Montreal.
However, Ferrari has opted to not bring any additional parts this weekend, with the Scuderia’s focus remaining on understanding the updates it brought to Spain last time out.
