ASTON MARTIN - AMR-ONE
ENGINEERING SOLUTIONS
Uncommon engineering
How Aston Martin Racing developed a brand new and highly innovative LMP1 in six months and on a tight budget
the AMR-One, but the team is stoically sticking to its guns and says that by Silverstone’s Intercontinental Le Mans Cup event it will have taken a large step forward. A revised engine design should be in place by then, along with updated aerodynamics, and the team can get on with some serious testing ahead of what should be a more competitive season in 2012. The Le Mans 24 hours in June was a disappointment for the team, which has developed Prodrive’s fi rst ever ground-up engine and chassis combination in just six months. The team has previously run a modifi ed Lola Prototype alongside its fl eet of
A
www.racecar-engineering.com • Le Mans
www.racecar-engineering.com • August 2011 June 2011
ston Martin Racing has come in for a lot of criticism over the development of its LMP1 challenger,
BY SAM COLLINS
self-developed GT cars but, in September 2010, Aston Martin Racing’s Team Principal George Howard-Chappell was given the green light to develop an all-new car for the new LMP1 formula. ‘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,’ said Howard-Chappell. ‘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.’
OPEN OR CLOSED? Although minor design work had already started when the programme offi cially got off the ground, some key choices were still to be made about the car. ‘There were two fundamental decisions to make and they were whether we would build an open car or a closed car and what kind of power plant we would use,’ said Howard-Chappell. The choices made were controversial – an open-top chassis propelled by a 2.0-litre, turbocharged, in-line six. 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, Howard-Chappell feels differently and claims that tyres were a key factor: ‘Driver changes are massively better in an open car
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