F1 | Aston Martin | The name's 21, AMR21
Aston Martin revealed the name of their 2021 challenger but James Bond was nowhere to be seen.
Aston Martin is a brand synonymous with James Bond (despite what BMW may like others to think) and as such, it seems fitting to paraphrase the legendary saying for the title of this article. Such an approach fits in with the teasing tone which Aston Martin has taken when it comes to promoting their return to the F1 grid after six decades. Previously, fans have enjoyed a surveillance style video of Sebastian Vettel arriving at the team’s base. Now, the latest revelation from the team (surely to grace the grid in green) has been the announcement that their 2021 challenger will be called AMR21.
Recalling the escapades of Ian Fleming’s suave secret agent, James Bond was surely most famous for driving an Aston Martin DB5. Although this infamy actually only came from Sean Connery’s exploits onscreen in Goldfinger - seeing how Ian Fleming had placed Bond in a DB Mark III in the novel. The DB5 was chosen as it was Aston Martin’s newest model when Goldfinger was in production.
The letters ‘DB’ were associated with Aston Martin because DB stands for David Brown, the English businessman who bought Aston Martin in 1947 and Lagonda in 1948. When Aston Martin debuted in Formula One, back in 1959 at the Dutch Grand Prix, they did so with a car titled ‘DBR4’. Unfortunately though, success never came the team’s way and they famously withdrew from the 1960 F1 Championship after six races and zero points following a lack of payment from F1 at the time.
Now, years later, there was speculation as to whether the Formula One incarnation would follow a similar trend. The answer, as we now know following Wednesday’s announcement, was no.
Having had such a less than auspicious experience all those years ago, maybe a name change was not such a surprise after all.
The AMR21 name reveal came through all social media guises, having previously been under the ‘Racing Point’ branding. A mere 16 second video clip released, on Wednesday, showed the name plate being finely polished and then the ‘AMR21 Chassis 01 18/01/21’ (indicating the date when the chassis was finalised) was precisely attached to the team’s 2021 challenger. What came next was a title page indicating ‘Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team’ and a reminder to everyone that this is a title sponsored team; a legendary name and should not be underestimated.
However, it is not just the name that has been revealed, seeing how the official website of F1, www.f1.com, reported on the AMR21 announcement alongside the comments from the team’s Technical Director Andrew Green. The revelations published make clear that considerable work has been done on the 2021 car's aerodynamics and give even more reason to be excited for the team’s F1 return.
"All the aero components are designed by the aerodynamics team using Catia CAD. These models are then imported into CFD [computational fluid dynamics], processed, and the results analysed," he said. “We, as a team, develop the CFD too, so ultimately, it’s only as good as we can make it. It is highly optimised to work with Formula 1 cars and, as it develops, it becomes increasingly powerful."
Ahead of the 2021 F1 season, we should brace ourselves for countless comparisons to Ian Fleming’s suave spy. As such, the declarations of ‘The name’s Vettel, Sebastian Vettel’ and ‘The name’s Stroll, Lance Stroll’ in promotional videos cannot be far behind. For now though, we have the exciting title of the AMR21 to enjoy as the team’s March 3rd launch day edges ever nearer. Meanwhile, the next question on everyone’s lips is surely, what name will Sebastian Vettel choose to christen his latest racecar with. Thankfully, all these answers and so much more are fast approaching.
Signs of confidence from Aston Martin and the same mindset is being projected over at Alfa Romeo:
