Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll believes that there is more adaptability with the updated 2022 car than there was with the original spec.
The Silverstone side had scored just six points between Stroll and team-mate Sebastian Vettel in the opening five rounds of the year, and this trend continued into round six in Spain even after they rolled out a new design that they have been working on since last year.
However, Vettel made it to Q3 in Monaco, and he would go on to score a point in extremely tricky changing conditions as the British team began to learn more about their new challenger.
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Stroll had made the third and final qualifying session in Miami under the old spec, but he believes that the progress of the old car would have saturated quickly compared to the current one.
“I think that with the modified AMR22 there are many more opportunities than the previous version,” he said, quoted by motorsport.com.
“With the launch version we were competitive in some races, like Imola and also in Miami. In fact, in Florida we went in Q3 and also in the points.
“But with this car, last weekend in Barcelona, we really struggled. So I think it’s the nature of the track that makes us go well or not.
“Maybe we still have to work on the high speed tracks, we are weaker in that type of track. curves, the fast ones.
“On the low-speed corners, on the other hand, the car appears to be much more competitive and I think there are opportunities to further develop the car in both the slow and fast corners thanks to this new design philosophy. This is very positive.”
As for Vettel’s performance in Monte Carlo on Sunday, he reckons P10 was the best he could have achieved on a difficult day, and is satisfied with the data that is being collected from the new chassis design.
“It was actually a clean race without any incidents and we got a point, which is not bad, because in Monaco it’s always difficult to work your way forward,” he explained.
“When I consider how the race developed, I don’t think more would have been possible.
“Especially the first laps with the rain tyre were really difficult. That’s why we switched to the intermediate as early as possible.
“We learned more about our car and how to optimise our set-up with the new parts we introduced in Barcelona.
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“All these steps put us on the right track for the next races.”
Aston Martin continue to run down in ninth in the Constructors’ Standings, ahead only of Williams.