Aston Martin F1 performance director Tom McCullogh says the team's early wind tunnel work has already produced a car that is "nothing like" the AMR22 fielded in pre-season testing.
F1 teams rolled out their new-spec cars in Barcelona, with each outfit implementing updates last week in Bahrain the importance of which varied for each team.
But each on-track session is an opportunity to collect valuable data which is then thoroughly analysed, with changes then tested and trialed in the windtunnel as part of a team's development programme.
McCullogh says the changes carried out so far at Team Silverstone's base have already led to a very different car specification.
"The car you are seeing now is nothing like the car we have in the wind tunnel," said the Aston performance director, quoted by Motorsport.com. "And I’m sure that’s the same for everyone up and down the pit lane.
"As you are adapting your cars, and optimising your cars, there will be an element of that car that’s strong, and it’s gone that way that we sort of half looked at before. So let’s revisit the data we’ve already got."
©AstonMartin
At the outset of the design of Aston's AMR22, the team's engineers made sure that their car's concept would allow for various development pathways to remain open, an approach that offered more evolution freedom down the road.
"We tried with this car not to drive ourselves into any cul-de-sacs," explained McCullogh.
"So of all the different solutions out there, from the packaging and philosophy side of things, we just thought we want to be able to have a bit of freedom not to lock ourselves in totally to just one philosophy.
"And that is the case – we are open to converging. I think for all teams there will be an element of convergence, but maybe not as radical as the extremes. It’s a very interesting time.
"I think for the aero design guys, it must be information overload for those people at the moment."
With pre-season testing done and dusted, teams have had an opportunity to consider the various design solutions that have been devised up and down the field, some of which will inevitably be adopted by rival teams.
"We’ve done a lot of testing with a lot of different parts and concepts and sidepods throughout the development phase," said McCullough. "And we’ve got some update parts we are evaluating, a whole load of different solutions.
"Of course you will look at what everyone else has done now – you’ve seen nine other teams’ interpretations of the regulations. So there’s always an element of convergence. But the Mercedes one is obviously quite different.
"And the aero design guys are deciding relative to the solutions they have at the moment and what they are thinking of doing going forwards."
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