Background: How the current weakness of the Aston Martin AMR25 can be explained

(Motorsport-Total.com) - Aston Martin is only slowly getting off to a good start in the 2025 Formula 1 season: At the last race in Barcelona , ​​Fernando Alonso scored points for the first time this year . While his teammate Lance Stroll was somewhat more successful, Aston Martin is currently second to last in the Constructors' Championship .

The AMR25 has one obvious weakness: Alonso has reached Q3 on Saturday three times this season, but has only scored points on Sunday once. Stroll, who achieved his only top-10 starting position at Imola, ultimately finished only 15th.

This means that the AMR25 was strong in qualifying, but fell significantly behind in Sunday's race. "We lacked top speed, and we lost a lot on the straights," Alonso said in Barcelona. "I didn't make a single overtaking maneuver with DRS."

But the lack of top speed isn't the AMR25's only weakness! What's become clear now is that the car has a weak front end, which means it understeers too much. At the same time, it also fails to manage the rear tires thermally efficiently.

High tire wear as a further weakness

Added to this is a lack of aerodynamic efficiency, which affects Aston Martin twice: the car is slow on the straights, but the team cannot simply reduce downforce to increase speed, as this would cause the car to slide more and tire wear would be even greater.

Especially since tire wear is considered a weakness of the AMR25 anyway. "In qualifying, you always have new tires. This masks many problems, not just for us, but for all cars," explains Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack. As the tires age, the AMR25's weakness becomes apparent.

One trick Aston Martin uses to compensate for this disadvantage is the so-called "scrubbing" of the tires. This involves briefly heating the tires to temperature during practice and then cooling them down again. This heat cycle changes the viscoelastic properties of the rubber.

This is intended to make the tires more resistant to graining and thermal degradation. While maximum grip is slightly reduced, the period during which the tire operates close to its peak performance is extended.

Aston Martin: Tire strategy is not the problem

Jun Matsuzaki, Aston Martin's chief tire expert, has been a key figure in the team for many years. He was on board during his time at Force India, where he helped Sergio Perez become a veritable "tire whisperer." Matsuzaki previously worked at Bridgestone.

He was also the first to realize in 2013 that Pirelli's rear tires lasted longer stints when mounted in the opposite direction. It is therefore unlikely that Aston Martin's performance deficit was due to a poor tire strategy on the track.

Rather, the cause lies in the mechanical construction and aerodynamic design of the AMR25. Alonso, in any case, is confident that Aston Martin has the problem under control: "I think we now know what's going on..."

Will the updates finally have an effect soon?

We can only hope that the upcoming upgrades will have an impact. So far, the improvements haven't delivered the hoped-for performance gains, and the current AMR25 still dates back to the development phase under the previous technical leadership.

Imola saw the first use of an update package, including a new underbody and revised body design , developed entirely under the new team management. It was also the first package to be developed using the new wind tunnel.

While it was never expected that this package would deliver a half-second per lap, CEO and team principal Andy Cowell described the update as a kind of laboratory test to test the resilience of the new tools and processes. And that appears to have been at least partially successful .