Aston Martin Performance Director Tom McCullough has put Fernando Alonso’s qualifying performance down to strides made with developing the DRS on the AMR24, taking inspiration from Red Bull’s efforts in this area.
On multiple occasions last year, Red Bull displayed incredible efficiency with its DRS allowing it to utilise the overtaking toll to greater effect compared to its rivals.
Aston Martin identified DRS as an area of improvement for the AMR24 over last year’s AMR23 and data from qualifying at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit for the last two Saudi Arabian GPs indicate team Silverstone has succeeded in that regard.
Alonso’s qualifying time for third on the grid in 2023 was 1:28.730 and the Spaniard improved to 1:27.846 to line up fourth for this year’s event in Jeddah.
“The efficiency of the car and the DRS effect is something we worked really hard on last year,” said McCullough (via formu1a.uno).
We saw how strong the Red Bull was, even the year before. That was a big focus of ours.
“The difference in the DRS effect is quite strong compared to last year. We gain a lot of time as a result.”
“If you compare Fernando’s lap from last year with Friday’s, it is 8.5-tenths faster.
“Especially when you look at where it is faster. In all high-speed corners and on the straight with DRS it is much faster.
“We have a very strong DRS effect, and here there are three straights where you can use DRS in qualifying, which were worth a lot of lap time.
“This is one of the reasons why we qualified well.”
Using Red Bull as inspiration for a refined DRS package is one thing, but McCulough has been on record saying that developing the AMR24 as an all-round machine has been a key focus.
Pointing toward McLaren’s mid-season turnaround in 2023, the Aston Martin man believes similar gains for his team could lead to clawing back the deficit to runaway leaders Red Bull.
“I think everyone can be caught up. If you look at the development we saw at McLaren last season, it was really impressive,” he said.
“That’s been the focus over the winter, to create a good platform for us to develop. We don’t want to stand still, nobody stands still.”
