The new wind tunnel for the team will be finished in time to contribute to the 2025 vehicle, according to Aston Martin technical director Dan Fallows.
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The wind tunnel is a part of the new manufacturing project being built at Silverstone, but it won’t be operational until the following year. The main building is expected to be finished by next May. The AMR25 will be initially developed in the Mercedes tunnel in Brackley before moving to the new facility once it has been finished and thoroughly tested. Technical director Dan Fallows stated that the goal for the wind tunnel is for it to be operational by the middle of 2024. “We’re hopeful that at least part of that will help the ’25. That will probably be the first car to significantly affect the new tunnel, depending on how the commissioning and other aspects of the tunnel go. “In terms of the factory itself, that will be operational in stages starting next year, so we’re expecting that the cars produced before then will also benefit from the new factory.”
Fallows said that converting to a new wind tunnel takes time, and the team won’t start using it until it is fully correlated. “A commissioning process is always required when building a wind tunnel,” he stated. And the purpose of that is simply just to confirm that it will provide you with the expected results. “Since we have the good fortune to conduct testing in the Mercedes wind tunnel, a facility of the highest calibre, we must ensure that the outcomes produced by our new facility are comparable to those. And it does take some time to do it. However, there are steps we may do to hasten that process. The goal is obviously to enter as quickly as possible.
Fallows emphasised that the team will benefit greatly from having a cutting-edge internal tunnel. There is no doubt that it will be a top-notch facility, and having access to it around the clock if necessary is certainly crucial. However, having your own facility allows you to conduct other experiments, which is invaluable and something we don’t necessarily have the luxury of doing at the moment sharing the tunnel with another team. “As we improve and our wind tunnel runs availability that we have from the Aerodynamic Testing Restrictions goes down, obviously we wouldn’t be spending as much time in the tunnel.”
