This is Pedro de la Rosa’s explanation of Aston Martin’s strange brake problems
The United States GP 2023 started in the worst way for Aston Martin, which started a new package of improvements to increase its aerodynamic load. An unexpected brake problem took the two green cars off the track in FP1 at the Austin circuit.
The car of Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll suffered a strange problem with the brake system, which caused excessive overheating. Both cars went through the pits to try to resolve the problems before returning to the track.
Pedro de la Rosaambassador, to Aston Martin and collaborators of DAZN, analyzes the problems.
“There seems to be fire in the drum of Fernando Alonso’s car”: Pedro de la Rosa examines Aston Martin’s brake problems in FP1 of the 2023 United States GP
“The truth is that we still do not know the root of the problem, because in theory, with so few laps, the front brakes shouldn’t have overheated,” he pointed out. From the Rose
“They broke the drums and were trying to understand brake overheating. The problem is that on a sprint weekend, you have less time to test the car, and we lost time,” he said.
“We have less time each time, and it’s a handicap if you have a mechanical problem in the first session in this one hour. Mainly, the purpose of this session is to understand a little bit about how the developments work to reach the limit of the heights, especially to lower the car as much as you can in a circuit as bumpy as this, but it is clear that we have to get out of the track,” declared the former driver.
“They are currently working on Fernando’s car. And indeed, if you see it in the images, on Fernando’s board, the drum seemed to be on fire on the left side of the center, and so they had to break it,” he explained.
“I repeat, it’s not normal, so that’s why they broke it. Because it’s not normal, and if it goes off track again, it will have the same problem. I mean, so the first thing you should do in these cases is to disassemble to see that nothing is blocking the cooling ducts.”.
After fixing the drums, the Asturian car returned to the track. Your partner, Lance Go, suffered a lot of problems with his car, and the team decided not to take any risks and continue to repair it in the garage. Aston Martin.
What are Aston Martin’s improvements to Fernando Alonso’s car for the F1 United States GP?
Aston Martin made many changes to AMR23 to increase downforce. The most important update is the inclusion of a new “barge board”, that is, a new outermost flow diffuser similar to the changes already implemented in Red Bull, Ferrari, or McLaren.
They will also have changes to the engine cover and under the car, as confirmed by the FIA team.
“Austin is a challenging circuit, where we will continue to learn about the AMR23. We have some updates, and we are very interested to see how it works, said Dan Fallows, the team’s technical director, to Soy Motor.
“It’s a shame it’s a Sprint weekend because we want to have more time to look at the updates and see how the car is doing. It’s a big challenge to get that understanding as quickly as possible,” he added.
