Best moment
Really there is only one place to turn to for Aston Martin’s best moment of the year – the signing of design guru Adrian Newey.
With Red Bull announcing back in May that Newey would be leaving the Milton Keynes outfit, after almost 20 years, the race to sign the Briton stepped into overdrive. After being linked with several teams across the grid it was Aston Martin that won out, with Newey becoming their Managing Technical Partner on a long-term deal.
There was plenty of fanfare around that September announcement – and rightly so – but it was also a significant indicator in the strength of the project with Newey agreeing to sign on. Aston Martin have long been building the facilities to challenge at the top and, in Newey’s arrival, they’ve bagged arguably the ultimate prize in designer terms currently working in F1.
Worst moment
While we could sit on the fence here and look at Aston Martin’s performance dip in the second half of the season, we’re going to focus the magnifying glass on Brazil.
While that race in Sao Paulo was a chaotic affair for many teams, for Aston it was one of pure pain – quite literally in Alonso’s case. On his way to P14 the Spaniard would report over the radio that his back was hurting as result, while he appeared to have tears in his eyes during a chat with Sky Sports F1 afterwards.
Meanwhile Stroll’s race also never got going – again, literally – with the Canadian spinning out on the formation lap before beaching himself on the gravel.