Tom McCullough, the Performance Director at the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team, says their aggressive development programme and great reliability have benefited them as they look to move up to sixth place in the Constructors’ Championship across the final four races of the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season.
Aston Martin scored consecutive sixth place finishes in the Singapore and Japanese Grand Prix – one each for Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel – while the latter also scored an eighth place at the Marina Bay Street Circuit, and the points scored across the two events mean the team are just seven points behind Alfa Romeo F1 Team ORLEN in the standings.
McCullough credits the development of the AMR22 this year that has seen them show significant improvements as the year has gone on, and it was satisfying to see them rewarded with the points finishes in both Singapore and Japan.
“We’ve had a continuous aggressive development from the start of the year,” said McCullough to Motorsport.com. “And we’ve been bringing bits to the car race-on-race, and the bits have been working, the car has been going faster, and we’ve been understanding the bits.
“The guys in the development function have been doing that, and it makes our job at the track easier with a faster car. At the same time thus far we’ve had impeccable reliability as well, always there racing.
“Whether you are only scoring one point for tenth place, like Lance did many, many times, or whether you’re starting to score the slightly bigger points when they are on offer, it’s about putting yourself there as best of the rest, like we saw other people doing at the start of the year. It’s nice that we’re able to do it a bit ourselves now.
“The drivers did an excellent job, we’ve squeezed the most out of it, both races were in difficult conditions, so it’s very satisfying.”
McCullough knows the BWT Alpine F1 Team and McLaren F1 Team are too far ahead as they battle over fourth place in the Constructors’ battle, but he feels Aston Martin have the ability to finish as best of the rest in sixth ahead of Alfa Romeo, Haas F1 Team and Scuderia AlphaTauri.
“These two races, Singapore and Japan, have yielded the good points for us, but also relative to our main competition in the constructors’,” said McCullough. “And that’s what’s key. Still four races to go. But we start those in a much better position relative to Haas, AlphaTauri and even now Alfa Romeo.
“McLaren and Alpine are too far ahead, and fighting for fourth and fifth. But for sixth backwards, we’ve always felt there was a possibility to fight. And at the moment we’re in that fight.
“There’s still a long way to go. But it’s nice to be in the fight and have a car that can weekend in, weekend out and at very different circuits always be in contention.”
