I'm intrigued by Aston's late and shortened testing. I do wonder if Adrian being team principal and chief aero, suspension, packaging etc engineer is enabling him to push the development right to the wire, but is it too close to the wire and it's going to bite them?
Will they get enough on track data to correlate their new wind tunnel, cfd etc?
Not to mention a completely new pu from Honda that hasn't been track run at all!
I do think Honda haven't learned from their time with Red Bull in that they need to utilise all grey areas of the regs to their advantage - they have always seemed to avoid grey areas and stick 100% to the letter of the rules and their intention. I seem to remember some stories, early on in their partnership with Red Bull about Honda not pushing the rules and regs to the limits - sort of being too honorable.
The Honda PU project is difficult to judge, should we compare it to the Ferrari and Mercedes as a “continuity manufacturer” or to the new entrants like RedBull and Audi? From the sound of it they pretty much dismantled the old team, started a year late and they’re partnered up with a new fuel supplier - so from that point of view, it’s probably fairer to compare them to a new entrant.
On the Aston side, it still feels like they’re still trying to work out how to put all the pieces together. I also wouldn’t be surprised if they’ve overreached in some way and this years car is somehow flawed initially. I think most folks would like to see them be successful immediately, because it could well be Alonso’s last opportunity to cap off his career, but if you put that aside, so much has changed it’s probably more realistic that it’s going to take a few years before it really comes together.