2023 is a massive season for Aston Martin, with the Silverstone-based team arguably no longer having any excuses for under-performing.
Owner Lawrence Stroll has invested heavily into the team, with him having signed personnel from the likes of Mercedes and Red Bull, who’ve had a year now to gel with the team and develop the AMR23.
They’ve also replaced Sebastian Vettel with an equally fast driver, after getting Fernando Alonso to join the side.
If that wasn’t enough, they’ve also got a state-of-the-art factory nearing completion, with the side set to have the best facilities on the grid.
Based on all of this, Aston Martin can’t really use any excuses should they start the new season badly, something they did last season.
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Aston Martin began the new aerodynamic era of the sport with the wrong concept; however, once they effectively introduced a new chassis at the Spanish Grand Prix, they improved considerably.
By the end of the season, they narrowly missed out on sixth in the Constructors’ Championship, a position they should be targeting to finish higher than this year.
Respected journalist Mark Hughes believes 2023 is a “big season” for the side, given the fact that, unlike in recent years, they are now a “very well-funded team” with a “lot of good people”.
“They’ve got a big challenge,” said Hughes, on The Race F1 Podcast.
“I’d summarise it as ensuring the whole is as big as the sum of the parts because they’ve had all this big investment by Lawrence Stroll, they’ve now got this high-profile talent they’ve recruited from Mercedes, they’ve recruited from Red Bull, they’ve got Eric Blandin there as a deputy technical director from Mercedes.
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“They didn’t have a big input on last year’s car and also the simulation tools led them astray with what the requirements were going to be for the new generation of ground effect Formula 1 car. So that needs to be way better too and I’m sure that’s something that they’ve been addressing.
“But this is a big season for Aston Martin, because you could sort of reason away why it had such a disappointing season last year, it was that the new formula came along at just the moment that they were transitioning from being a small team to a pretty big team and all the reorganisation and recruitment and putting people together that hadn’t worked together before that entails.
“But they’ve had a year now to be working together and to understand where the limitations were and they have all this resource – it’s a very well-funded team, they’ve got a lot of good people there.”