As part of the huge package of aerodynamic changes, the team had to make decisions on cooling several weeks ago, and it was partly overtaken by surprisingly high temperatures in Barcelona over the weekend.
Under such circumstances, teams are forced to “open up” their cars and create additional cooling capacity, which in turn generates drag and impacts straight-line speed.
After a promising first race on Friday, Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll qualified 16th and 18th respectively on Saturday, and their chances of progressing in Sunday’s race were obviously compromised by the extra drag.
Green said the new package showed promise but conceded the team still needed to figure it out.
“There’s a lot of optimization in this car that we need to do,” he said when asked about Autosport’s progress.
“It’s a completely different car, you have to go around all the settings to see where the sweet spot is.
“I think the temperatures really surprised us this weekend. We obviously had to make a decision on the cooling system for this car about a month ago.
“And we didn’t bring enough, to be honest. So that didn’t help. It’s a compromise for racing.
Sebastian Vettel, Aston Martin AMR22
Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images
“Of course, she didn’t show her potential. She was much closer to her potential yesterday. And we got a bit lost, which can happen when you have a brand new car. Yesterday was the first driving day.” , really.”
Green explained that Vettel and Stroll had management issues in qualifying.
“They both suffered from severe oversteer,” he said. “Once you oversteer on that track, not only does it hurt your sectors one and two, but by the time you get to sector three the rear tires are finished so sector three suffers as well. So overall , we could have done a lot better.”
Green suggested that the revised AMR22 be considered a “launch car” given that there are so many new features.
“We are very comfortable with what we have learned and happy with what we have learned so far,” he added. “I think it has potential, for sure it has a lot more potential than the car that came before it.
“We just have to start extracting that performance and start developing it, really.”