“Looking forward to the challenge”: Aston Martin acquires another brilliant driver after Fernando Alonso as Stoffel Vandoorne joins in reserve role
Stoffel Vandoorne
While Aston Martin are going to lose four-time F1 World Champion Sebastian Vettel at the end of this year as the German is walking away from Formula One to seek retirement, it seems that all the bigshot drivers are travelling to the AMR garages in a swarm. Only a few weeks after Vettel announced his departure from F1, Fernando Alonso came out with the huge news that he will be moving to Lawrence Stroll’s team next year. And now, Formula E Champions and current Mercedes reserve and test racer Stoffel Vandoorne has been recruited under Aston Martin in their new reserve role.
Just like Alonso’s shift to a new team at 40 years of age has created a huge ripple in the Formula One world, and it caused an upheaval in the drivers’ market as well. Now, the hiring of Stoffel Vandoorne has left Mercedes’ reserve driver seat unoccupied till now, but it seems Daniel Ricciardo will finally be the one to become a reserve tricer for the Stuttgart-based team.
This will not be Stoffel Vandoorne’s first stint in F1 as he had previously joined McLaren after bagging the win for the 2015 GP2 series. But that career move did not work out for him, and he chose to go into Formula E in the end. And he has also fulfilled the role of an F1 reserve driver at Mercedes for three years, counting the current 2022 season.
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“Incredibly excited”: Stoffel Vandoorne talks about Aston Martin’s huge potential to do well in future F1 seasons
After scoring a deal with two-time World Championship winner Fernando Alonso, it seems that Aston Martin have added yet another big name to their team with the recent announcement of Formula E Champion Stoffel Vandoorne as their reserve driver. Speaking of his move to AMR, Vandoorne said, “It is incredibly exciting to be stepping into a reserve-driver role in Formula One – and I’m delighted to be doing it with Aston Martin team.”
Welcome to the team, @svandoorne.
Formula E champion Stoffel Vandoorne enhances the 2023 @AstonMartinF1 driver line-up by joining @FelipeDrugovich as a test and reserve driver.
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— Aston Martin Aramco F1 Team (@AstonMartinF1) November 1, 2022
Besides Vandoorne, F2 Champion Felipe Drugovich is the second test driver for Aston Martin for the 2023 season. As this year did not turn out to be an encouraging one for Lawrence Stroll’s team as far as points are concerned, a lot of work lies ahead of the two test drivers to try out new features and additions to the cars to find out how they can improve their performance in the upcoming season.
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Riddhi Mondal
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