The FIA cost cap and Aerodynamic Testing Restrictions that limit wind tunnel and CFD hours pushes teams to start early on the development of a new car rather than immediately spend their way out of trouble.
With the ATR having reset on 1 July, Aston Martin has lost 20% of its aero testing time (down from 40 wind tunnel runs to 32) to reflect its climb from seventh place in the constructors’ standings to third.
Since the development of its AMR24 is well under way, the team say the new car is now influencing the upgrades being brought to the 2023 machine, which Aston is still pushing “reasonably hard”.
Aston Martin performance director Tom McCullough explained: “Obviously, the 2024 car, you have to start pretty early.
“The understanding of our philosophy of car really is 18 months old and continuing.
“Of course, you're always tuning your philosophy to try to be as competitive as possible. There are lessons that we're learning, developing the ’24 car, that we can transfer to the ’23 car.
“Obviously, what we see at the track is always weeks, months behind the development side. But we're still trying to develop the car reasonably hard this year, with some parts coming.
“We're still able to transfer some of the learning from ’24 to this year's car. And there's still a lot of races still to go this year.”
For the Dutch GP last weekend, in which Fernando Alonso finished second to Max Verstappen, Aston Martin brought a heavily revised floor.
In FP1, it also trialled a small ‘bowtie’ rear winglet mounted behind the diffuser - an element that will feature again later in the campaign.
McCullough says these new parts reflect Aston Martin’s plan to develop “deep into the season” as it has margin to push updates even within the constraints of the cost cap.
He said: "We still have quite a few parts coming, actually. Obviously, a lot of the parts, they take weeks and months to come to the track.
“But the actual development in the wind tunnel and CFD is obviously tailing off, but sometimes you find bits on the AMR24, our next year's car, that you can translate to this year's car.
“Cost cap-wise, the budget margins are there for us to do that. So, we're still hoping to bring bits quite deep into the season.”
