Tom McCullough, Performance Director at Aston Martin, is confident that his team can continue to grow, and that the AMR24 can certainly be further developed. The British racing team had a poorer start than the impressive start to the 2023 season, but the British engineer is still confident. McCullough even sees the growth at Aston Martin as an advantage for the team compared to Red Bull Racing.
Although the AMR24 still appears to be in its infancy, with Alonso’s P5 during the Jeddah race as the provisional best result of 2024, Aston Martin remains ambitious and the team has indicated that with the AMR24 it has established a foundation that can be further developed . Aston Martin Performance Director McCullough cited McLaren’s revival last year as an example that good progress is really possible.
‘I think everyone can be overtaken. If you look at the development we saw at McLaren last season, it was really impressive,” McCullough told Motorsport Week. ‘That was also the focus during the winter, to create a good platform for our development. We don’t want to stand still, no one stands still.’
McCullough: ‘We are a growing team’
McCullough also indicated that, for example, Aston Martin’s move to the new base in Silverstone shows that it is still a ‘growing’ team, compared to a team such as Red Bull Racing. “Red Bull does not have our development time in the wind tunnel,” the British engineer emphasizes. ‘They are clearly a very large and successful team, with many people who have had a strong position for a long time. We are still growing, we are learning to work together, with a new factory, new facilities, a new wind tunnel in use, and a new simulator. A lot has happened lately, but we want to develop this car much further.’
According to McCullough, Aston Martin is already well underway with the further development of the AMR24, and ‘the development path is quite good. We have already taken a number of parts to Jeddah that are a good step forward for the car. We never run with the same specs from race to race, very rarely. And we are currently in the phase where we can continue to develop well with our development tools. So it’s about getting those parts to the track as quickly as possible, and hopefully the car continues to improve.”
