"We tried to have as much freedom everywhere else" – Aston Martin on reducing component acquisition from Mercedes

Aston Martin has reduced the number of transferable components it will be taking from Mercedes, according to the team's chief technical officer, Andrew Green.

For the uninitiated, the componens in an F1 car can be broken down into three categories — listed team components (LTC), transferable components (TRC), and, standard supply components (SSC).

According to the FIA rule book, components whose design, manufacturing, and intellectual property are owned and/or controlled by a single competitor or its agents on an exclusive basis are LTCs. Parts like the gearbox, exhaust system, front and rear suspension, and electrical loom are some of the many TRCs that can be sold by one team to another.

For the upcoming 2022 season, Aston Martin has chosen not to rely as heavily on Mercedes for as many TRCs but has maintained freedom in other parts of development, as per Green. He said:

“The reason for the effective rear-end from Mercedes, it comes in a nice neat package, it is aligned. We have been through just buying the gearbox and putting our own suspension on it and the two fighting each other for too long, it seemed the right thing to do was to have the suspension on the gearbox that the gearbox has been designed for. It really was as simple as that. We tried to have as much freedom everywhere else.”

---

Andrew Green reveals why Aston Martin did not take front suspension from Mercedes for 2022 F1 season

Green went on to explain the challenges of working with a front suspension from Mercedes that wasn't aligned. He added, saying:

“If we looked at the other areas, the front suspension is one, we could have gone front suspension but then you are into trying to align the chassis into a suspension system that you get late, you have to wait for the suspension to be defined before defining your own chassis and that just wasn’t something we could really consider, especially with the timeframes we have. We would then be looking at we would have to define a chassis quicker than Mercedes because we would get the information later than them and we are not in a position to do that so that is the reason.”

The new Aston Martin AMR22 will be driven by Canadian Lance Stroll and four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel when the season gets underway with the 2022 Bahrain Grand Prix.