Lance Stroll discusses Aston Martin’s F1 aspirations: We trail by 4 seconds.
Lance Stroll has indicated that Aston Martin must uncover four seconds of performance during the remaining days of preseason testing if it aims to compete with the leading teams at the season opener in Australia.
The AMR26 is the inaugural Aston Martin to gain from the expertise of renowned designer Adrian Newey at the team, but it had a sluggish start to preseason after arriving late for the initial test in Barcelona last month.
The team has accumulated mileage on the Honda-powered vehicle during this week’s test in Bahrain, but when Stroll addressed the media on Thursday afternoon, his teammate Fernando Alonso was 4.6 seconds behind the fastest lap of the test, which was set by Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.
“I don’t know, I mean, right now we appear to be four seconds off the top team, four and a half seconds,” Stroll remarked when asked if Aston Martin could close the gap by the first race on March 8.
“It’s impossible to determine what fuel loads and everything people are using, but, you know, now we need to aim to find four seconds of performance.”
Headline lap times can often be misleading during testing as teams pursue various goals, track conditions fluctuate, and cars operate with differing fuel loads.
However, when Stroll was questioned if the current performance gap could be bridged by following a standard test program over the remaining days, he implied that the team still had significant work ahead.
“I don’t think it [the required performance] just falls from the sky, you know,” he stated. “I believe you have to enhance and discover performance in the car and the engine; these are just typical challenges in F1.
“When you’re trailing the competition, you must consider ways to extract more from the package you possess, while simultaneously making improvements. No one remains stagnant in this industry; everyone is striving to find performance in every possible way and every weekend, all the time.
“We’re engaged in that effort, attempting to find and extract more performance from the car daily, and I think also looking ahead to introduce upgrades on the power unit side and the chassis side. We will see in Australia where we stand and how we progress throughout the season.
“But, I mean, we’re pushing as hard as we can, and, you know, that’s all we can do at this moment.”
Aston Martin has set ambitious goals for winning championships in the upcoming years, and Newey’s arrival, along with a unique power unit agreement with Honda, were viewed as crucial steps toward achieving that aim.
While Stroll tempered expectations for the season’s start, he affirmed that the team’s ultimate goals remain unchanged.
“I mean, we are where we are,” he noted. “Do we aspire to contend for race victories? Yes. Are we contending for race victories today? It doesn’t seem like it. Does that imply we can’t compete for race wins in the future? I believe we can.
“So, you know, I mean, I don’t possess a crystal ball. I didn’t have a crystal ball before the season commenced, and we are where we are today. It doesn’t appear to be exceptional.
“Can that shift in the coming weeks? Can it improve significantly? For sure. Will it 100% get much better? I don’t know.
“I don’t have the answers to those inquiries. So all I can say is we’re pushing as hard as we can. We’re dedicated to enhancing performance in the car and the engine every single second of every single day, and time will reveal how competitive we appear at the first race and throughout the entire season.”
Source: espn.com
