FEATURE ASTON MARTIN AMR-ONE
Uncommon engineering
How Aston Martin Racing developed a brand new and highly innovative LMP1 in six months and on a tight budget.
By Sam Collins
Lola Prototype alongside its fl eet of self-developed GT cars but, in September of 2010, Chappell’s team was given the green light to develop an all-new car for the new LMP1 formula being introduced for 2011. ‘We had had three years of experience of the Lola Aston Martin so we could have chosen to run another year with a grandfathered car, but we wanted to control every single design aspect and going for somebody else’s chassis doesn’t give you that freedom. In the past we had our diffi culties with Lola, when you are not in control of the chassis and you can’t decide what to homologate, or can’t do it when you want to. Also, the name above the garage counts.’ Although minor design work had already started when the
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programme offi cially got off the ground, some key choices were still to be made about the car. ‘T ere were two fundamental decisions to make and they were whether we would build and open
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www.racecarengineering.com • August 2011
t’s a question of getting what you want.’ explained Aston Martin Racings’ team principal, George Howard Chappell. His team of engineers had rushed through a project to design, build and race a car from the ground up in just six months. In recent years, the team has run a modifi ed
car or a closed car and what kind of power plant we would use,’ reveals Chappell. T e choices made were controversial – an open- top chassis propelled by a 2.0-litre, turbocharged, in-line six.
Open or closed? Although the only other works cars (Peugeot’s 908 and Audi’s R18) built to the new regulations were closed cars, and both manufacturers claim a clear advantage from that format, Chappell feels diff erently and claims that tyres were a key factor: ‘Driver changes are massively better in an open car and, with the number of stints you can do at Le Mans, you may well need to change the driver when you are not changing tyres, so you pick up time on the closed cars there.’ However, with Audi managing to run fi ve stints at Le Mans on the same tyres, and Michelin working hard at increasing the life of its rubber, it is likely that Aston Martin Racing has found something of an advantage for 2012 and 2013 with this solution. Chappell concedes the closed cars do have an aerodynamic
advantage, but says the benefi t is small. ‘In a pure aero sense, there is lower drag and, if you are clever, there is a little more
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