The Spanish Grand Prix is often an opportunity for teams to make significant changes to cars. This is particularly the case with the Aston Martin, and the criticism has not been kind. This will be a copy of the Red Bull RB18.
Aston Martin was upset by the unveiling of a modified single-seater on Friday. The AMR22 has changed significantly, especially in the shape of the sidepods, with a direct impact on airflow.
There was talk that only Lance Stroll would benefit from these changes, but eventually Sebastian Vettel could also ride in the new version of the car.
The changes are significant, admitted Walk in the paddock. The aerodynamic assembly has been redesigned, this is a new philosophy. And we think we’re going in the right direction, so hopefully the lap times will be nice.
The team worked hard for a few months so we could ride with it to Barcelona, so there was excitement in the air.
Today, the new AMR22 has been dubbed the green Red Bull in Barcelona’s paddock. In the first free training session, Red Bull team members sitting on the low wall each had a green bottle of the famous energy drink.
The expert press was really quick to spot the aerodynamic similarities between the Barcelona AMR22 and the Red Bull RB18.
By looking forward to free practice on Friday, we realize that Aston Martin is expressing itself better.
Still ahead was Max Verstappen, who set 5th time in RB18, 33 hundredths (+0.336) from Charles Leclerc’s reference time (1: 19.670). Lance Stroll only did the 13th time, at… 1,579 s from Monegasque.
Vettel finished better in 8th time, 1.033 s behind Ferrari, just behind Sergio Pérez’s Red Bull (+0.962). Something to worry about the ruling world champion team. In fact, there are only 71 thousandths of a second between the two pilots.
After verifying the new single-seater, the FIA gave the green light to Aston Martin about the similarity of the AMR22 to the RB18. All components are in accordance with regulations.
The Red Bull team reacted, explaining that they did nambobola that you copy your single-seater, but the detection of the minimum transfer of intellectual property (IP) is very worried.
Recall that the former head of aerodynamics for the Red Bull team, Dan Fallows, has been working for the Aston Martin team since April.
Source: Radio-Canada
