For most people fortunate enough to attend the 2022 and 2023 editions of the Australian Grand Prix, the two events appeared very similar. Dominant winners in the forms of Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen, their glory secured in front of packed grandstands and a party atmosphere banishing the hideous pandemic memories in Melbourne.
Although Leclerc and his Ferrari squad had little to celebrate this time around, their negative 12-month turnaround was nothing compared to the positive progress secured by Aston Martin in the opposite direction. Earlier this month, behind Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso secured a hat-trick of third-place finishes, with Lance Stroll eventually classified fourth in the other AMR23.
Even in Friday practice, Autosport had been keeping an eye on the green machines thrashing around Albert Park. They had been there or thereabouts with Red Bull, if not occasionally leading it, in the on-track sessions from the first two rounds of 2023. “Can you believe it?” Autosport’s Supercars correspondent Andrew van Leeuwen asked as we wandered down to climb a photographer’s tower overlooking the opening corners. “This time last year those blokes couldn’t even keep it on the road, remember?”
The Australian races are important reference points in the Aston Martin story. Wind back to the post-Melbourne jetlag adjustment in 2022, and many in the paddock were rather wincing in Aston’s direction. Sebastian Vettel, only just returned from missing the first two races of F1’s new groundeffect era after contracting COVID-19, had crashed in front of the vantage point Autosport had found inside the rapid Turns 9-10 complex in FP3. Just two hours later, Lance Stroll tagged Nicholas Latifi’s Williams and smashed his AMR22 across the track so much that the resulting red flag delay meant the repairs on Vettel’s car could be completed in time for a Q1 shot the German
