How a Mercedes component is holding back Fernando Alonso from challenging Max Verstappen in 2023

Aston Martin's progress during the 2023 F1 season is supposedly getting hindered by the Mercedes's components on the AMR23.

How a Mercedes component is holding back Fernando Alonso from challenging Max Verstappen in 2023

Alonso, Wolff, and, Verstappen

The Silverstone-based Aston Martin F1 team has proved to be the biggest surprise of the 2023 F1 season. The team was languishing toward the bottom of the standings last year, but as things stand, they are currently the second-best team on the grid, ahead of heavy-hitters like Mercedes and the Maranello-based Scuderia Ferrari F1 team.

While Aston Martin’s AMR23 has worked really well in the hands of Fernando Alonso, and Lance Stroll, it has recently come up that their progress during the ongoing campaign could get severely hampered because of a component that they have got from the Brackley-based Mercedes F1 team. Aston Martin is one of the customer teams of the Mercedes team on the current grid.

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The Mercedes team supplies components to a number of teams and it is believed that the AMR23s gearbox and suspension are the same as that used on the Brackley-based team’s W14. Moreover, it has also come to light that the transmission system on the AMR23 is bulkier in comparison to Red Bull’s RB19. This is all thanks to the Mercedes team.

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As per formu1a.uno, the bulkier part of the transmission is drowned in the diffuser and because of this, Aston Martin requires a lot more rear wing to compensate for the loss, and in turn, it creates a lot of unwanted drag. In the first two qualifying sessions of the 2023 campaign, Fernando Alonso lost almost a second because of it. This is a major problem as far as Aston Martin’s hopes of challenging for the 2023 F1 World Championship are concerned.

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Aston Martin has got a lot of work ahead of it in 2023

Fernando Alonso
Fernando Alonso

The 2023 F1 season is two races down, and there are still 21 races left to go, keeping this into view, the Silverstone-based team has got time to find potent solutions for the problems that they are currently facing. No one expected them to be ahead of Mercedes and Ferrari this year, but yet they are and still have got a performance left to extract from the AMR23.

The team has done extremely well so far in the campaign, and if they are somehow able to get better and better as the season progresses, then it would bode really well for its two drivers, Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll. After two races, Aston Martin is joint second in the Constructors Championship, alongside the Toto Wolff-led, Mercedes F1 team.

The upcoming event is at Albert Park in Melbourne, and a lot of eyes are again going to be on the two Aston Martins that would hit the track from the upcoming Friday onwards. Considering everything that has happened around the Silverstone-based team so far in the season, how do you see them performing at the Australian Grand Prix?

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