F1 | Aston Martin, Szafnauer: “We proposed decreasing the size of the rear wing”

It is certainly no mystery that the start of the season was not the simplest for Aston Martin, which saw a clear decline compared to last season. A step backwards due above all to the regulatory changes for 2021 which, according to team principal Otmar Szafnauer, have significantly penalized the Silverstone team, so much so as to unleash the wrath of the American engineer.

A dissatisfaction due in particular to the methods of approval of the new regulations, without the unanimity of all the teams. According to Szafnauer, in fact, the 2021 rules would have been imposed by the FIA ​​for safety reasons, even if during the voting three teams had proven against their introduction, including Aston Martin and Mercedes, aware of the fact that they would have penalized the single-seaters with a less pronounced rake: “We've been developing a high rake car for many, many years, ever since the high rake concept started with blower exhausts and we've been one of the only ones, actually the only one, to change from a philosophy high rake to low rake. So we have the internal ability, both through CFD and by doing tunnel testing, as well as having the experience of both, to take a look at the changes and be able to determine whether it's more detrimental to one philosophy than the other , which is exactly what we demonstrated in August last year and I believe we were right. We objected on the basis that they were more favorable to high-rake cars and then proposed other regulations that would be fairer. The vote of the Technical Advisory Committee is only indicative and was seven to three at the time,” explained the team principal of the English team in the press conference on Friday.

Szafnauer also revealed that in the consultation process regarding the new regulations, some teams had also proposed to intervene only on the rear wing by reducing its size, so that this would have a more equal impact on all participants: “We proposed to don't have the second changes made, because the changes came in succession, and we thought the first change applied was enough to slow the cars down. But there were other suggestions that were put forward and not just by us, but in the beginning, and I'll give you the example, the idea was to reduce the size of the rear wing and that would affect every contender equally , but it was not chosen,” the engineer then added.