The Silverstone -based outfit suffered a frustrating first qualifying session of the season in Bahrain, with both Nico Hulkenberg (17th) and Lance Stroll (19th) busted out of Q1.
It was a disappointing result for Aston Martin, who had hoped to make a good step forward on this year’s grid.
However, the team has explained that its pace is currently limited by the porpoising problem that several teams have suffered with the new 2022 cars.
Andrew Green , technical director of Aston Martin, explained that by having to raise the ride height to stop that phenomenon, the team was losing downforce, and that translated into a large chunk of lap time.
When asked how well porpoising is under control, Green said, “I would say we’re still a long way from solving it the way we’d like to solve it.”
“We had to make some compromises with the car and the setup to be able to race without suffering from it. But we tried a few things in testing and free practice and we’re making good progress.”
Asked to estimate the impact of those changes, Green said: “Currently, from where we are now, I’d say we’re probably losing more than half a second, probably closer to three-quarters of a second. Something like that.”
To put the time deficit into context, Hulkenberg came within three tenths of moving into Q2. In fact, an improvement of 0.75 seconds would have put him in the top ten.
The teams found that solving the porpoising problem requires a combination of aerodynamic and mechanical solutions, and Green confirmed that both fronts need to be worked on together.
“It’s a bit of both, you need the two to go together,” he analyzed. “It’s an aerodynamic phenomenon. We know where it’s coming from and what to do, but it requires quite a complicated aerodynamic change to solve the problem. So that’s why it takes a bit of time.
“We can put patches on and get rid of parts. But to get everything right, it takes a bit of reworking on the aerodynamics.”
Green suggested that it would probably take a while for Aston Martin to come up with a final answer.
“I still think it will be several races before we end up with a solution that gives us the performance we need and the aero stability we need,” he said.
“It’s a balancing act. We can reduce the performance of the car, get rid of the porpoising, but that’s not good. So we have to try and do both. And that’s where we’re trying to aim for the next race.”
“We’re going to take steps for the next grand prix. But I think it’s going to be a few races before we really get over it and get something that’s really working.”
