Aston Martin explains early real F1 car reveal

While a number of rivals have elected to launch later in a bid to maximise development time, Aston Martin thinks that there is a danger from cutting things too fine.

That is why the squad elected to be the first team to reveal its real 2022 car on Thursday, ahead of it running at a filming day at Silverstone on Friday.

Chief technology officer Andrew Green reckons that, with the cars being so new this year, there is a risk of unforeseen problems cropping up when the car first hits the track.

And if teams leave it too late to discover such issues, there is a risk of that then compromising running at the first official pre-season test at Barcelona from February 23.

Speaking about the timing of Aston Martin's launch plans, Green said: "What we wanted to do was shakedown as early as possible to check all the systems and that on the car. That gives us some time between shakedown and the Barcelona test. That was the reason for shaking down on Friday, so we have time to react.

"Hopefully we have a good shakedown and there's nothing to react to. But because the car is absolutely brand new, with no carryover at all, and pre-season testing is really short, and the second test is so close to the first race, that it's going to be almost impossible to react to, we thought it's good to get a shakedown in prior to the first test

"It gives ourselves a good gap between the shakedown and the first test to react to."

Lance Stroll, Aston Martin AMR22

Photo by: Aston Martin

While F1's launch season got off to a false start, with Haas having a livery reveal on car renders and Red Bull just unveiling an updated show car, Aston Martin was clear it did not want to play any games over what it was up to.

Asked why it had a real launch, Green said: "Because we're an honest bunch - we're not trying to deceive!

"We had a car available. We didn't want to do a livery launch. We're beyond doing livery launches this year. We wanted to do the real thing."

What we have seen of proper 2022 concepts, with the Haas version and Aston Martin, already hints at some different interpretations of the sidepod areas of the car.

Greed reckoned that there could be some more different interpretations as the new designs all roll out.

"I think we will see different approaches initially," he said. "I think there are lots of different ways of approaching the problem with the '22 regulations, and initially you will see a few variations. Some similar to a theme.

"But I don't think it will be long before we all align as far as the big visual aspects of the car."