Mark Hughes crunches the numbers on Aston Martin's big upgrade for the Hungarian Grand Prix - and asks whether it can be enough to close a four-second deficit to near the front of the F1 pack
Newey's latest creation makes its debut in Hungary
As the so-far disastrously slow Aston Martin gets its first performance upgrade in Hungary this weekend, what should our expectations be?
First of all, it’s a very significant reworking of the car. Although Adrian Newey stresses that the core structure is the same, that’s just the skeleton of the car.
The surfaces the air is going to see are very different. It’s also going to be close to the weight limit rather than 10-15kg over it. But the other important point is that it will not get its matching new Honda power unit until after the summer break.
Here’s how the car has performed so far relative both to the front and the Q1/Q2 cut-off time.
There are a couple of striking trends within those numbers. One is the step change in how less competitive the car has been since Barcelona, a reflection of how much everyone else is developing their cars as the Aston spec has remained frozen. The other is how Q2 is now so much further away than at the beginning of the season, at 0.9% off in Melbourne vs 2.9% adrift around Spa.
Converting those percentages to global lap time deficits, the Aston has averaged 3.8sec off pole (at 1min 27.08sec compared to the Mercedes at 1min 23.29sec). But if we take just the last four races, the Aston has averaged 4.5sec off pole and 2.1sec off making Q2.
Aston’s car includes a total of 16 upgraded parts, according to FIA data
Getty Images
If the car has been running at 15kg over the weight limit so far and that has now all been shaved off, that’s worth around 0.45sec. Meaning the aero upgrade will need to find around 1.65sec to put the car into Q2.
Is that feasible? Given the scale of the upgrade and how far off the original car has been, it’s just about on the outer edge of it, yes. “We’re predicting a large step,” said Newey last week. “But I’m reluctant to put numbers on it.”
If that 1.65sec improvement is achieved, that would still leave it around 2.8/2.9sec adrift of the front. How much of that can the upgraded Honda power unit (due to debut at Zandvoort immediately after the break) find?
Why ‘oversensitive’ officials have made a big mistake by trying to sweep Formula 1’s issues under the carpet
By
Motor Sport
Well, it’s about more than just peak power but as a general rule of thumb, each extra 10bhp is worth around 0.25sec of lap time. The Honda shortfall has been estimated at around 90bhp, which, if accurate, will be losing the car around 2.25sec per lap.
If (big if) Honda finds all of that deficit, and if (another big if) the Budapest aero upgrade is worth all of that 1.65sec needed to make Q2, it would leave the Zandvoort-spec Aston-Honda potentially only around 0.5sec off the pace, ie around the same as McLaren. Put the 0.45sec weight saving into that and it’s almost there.
But that’s a lot of ifs needed to line up perfectly. It’s so much more complicated than these simple numbers make it sound – what is the actual Honda PU shortfall and how does the deployment impact upon it? Are the Honda power deficit numbers accurate? How much of that deficit will the upgrade address? Will the aero do as Newey and his team have simulated? How much lap time is there in fine-tuning the PU and deployment maps to a completely different aero performance?
But this weekend is when we begin to get the first answers.
In previous lives Mark raced cars, worked at Jim Russell racing school, got a university degree which he never used, tried working in industry, didn’t like it, left and joined Motoring News in 1988 as a junior club race reporter. Went freelance in ’96, concentrated on F1 from 2000. Grand Prix editor of Autosport for 10 years.
