Aston Martin’s unrepresentative AMR25 renders and Haas’ VF-25 details

Aston Martin used to be pretty reliable when it came to launching new cars. When it unveiled its 2022 machine, one of the first cars to court the public’s gaze since ground effect-style aerodynamics were reintroduced, the Silverstone squad let it be known that it was unveiling a ‘proper’ car instead of relying on the usual glut of render trickery.

It’s 2025, and Aston Martin has opted for… well, render trickery. Even as this writer was about to assume a soupçon of cynicism, given that there are a few items on these renders that were even posited last year as AMR24 bodywork that also never made it to the track, images of the real AMR25 had emerged of the team’s Monday shakedown at the Bahrain circuit.

Unsurprisingly, the real thing looks distinctly different to the computer-generated imagery pumped into the stratosphere on Sunday night.

From both, there are a few things that we can glean. What we do know is that Aston Martin has stuck with push-rod suspension at the front and rear, and thus run in the same format as Williams. We also know that the sidepods have been given a much heavier undercut and also channelled heavily over the top surface, with the intent of distributing plenty of energised air to the rear of the car to work the diffuser harder.

This is the result of the team’s wound-licking winter, as it sought to understand why none of its 2024 upgrades did anything other than make the car more capricious to drive. Improving rear-end stability has been one of those pillars of the AMR25’s design, given its predecessor’s propensity for waywardness.

To ensure the sidepods could receive that treatment, Aston Martin has condensed the packaging of its radiators – likely broken up into multiple parts or angled in a manner that they can still provide the requisite heat extraction from the powertrain. Further shrink-wrapping can be viewed around the engine cover, as the section behind the intake has shrunk in size.

This can be seen in the difference between the render and the real car, as the distance from the front face (where the intake is) and the rear is shorter in the real-world photographs. This is evident at the Aston Martin wordmark. 

Here, the team has also introduced what it describes as a “jagged, razor-sharp spine”; rather than using the full bounding box available for the shark-fin, it has cut parts away to introduce exposed corners, which should in theory allow enough time for the airflow to be straightened up before energising it ahead of the rear wing. 

The front end is also clearly different on the shakedown images; the front wing being another item “hidden” by the use of an outdated spec in the render shots provided. The AMR25 features a nose tapered into a point, and the retention of an inboard-loaded front wing (where the wing elements are at their largest around the nose area) benefits from subtle curvature to provide the airflow with a jumping off point for the rest of the car to benefit from.

Much of the team’s off-season work cannot be seen, as it has paid particularly close attention to the floor to ensure that its target of having a more predictable car can be achieved

Also of note is the positioning of the rear leg of the upper wishbone, mounted low down along the chassis flanks. Much of the team’s off-season work cannot be seen, as it has paid particularly close attention to the floor to ensure that its target of having a more predictable car can be achieved.

One of the AMR24’s key weaknesses also lay in its efficiency, as it was draggy versus its immediate rivals – leaving to Lance Stroll’s voice-cracking complaints about the other cars being in a “different category” during last year’s Japanese Grand Prix.

The team must hope that this has also been addressed; this was also present in the AMR23, but this was masked somewhat as the other outfits had not progressed as hoped.

Haas VF-25

Haas jumped up to seventh in the 2024 championship, so a positive year means the American squad has kept many characteristics from last season’s car

Photo by: Autosport

Much of the bodywork seen on Haas’ VF-25 during its Bahrain shakedown appears to be an evolution of that seen on last year’s VF-24, with subtle differences. Evidently, the team liked what it had with its 2024 car, and sought to retain most of its stable characteristics and reduced appetite for tyres versus its predecessors.

Many of its late-season developments, including the pointier nose and more angular front wing, remain in place. There are some key differences, in that the sidepods’ trailing face has now been more significantly channelled. The engine cover has also changed shape to help open up the airflow moving inwards around the rear wheels.

The push-rod front and pull-rod rear remains in place, as Haas has presumably opted to use Ferrari’s 2024 suspension arrangement here rather than gravitate towards the SF-25’s pull-rod front and pull-rod rear concoction. 

It’s probably safe to say that, given the greater detail along the floor edge, that Haas has put much of its development time here. The cluster of fins and the slot behind suggests that the aerodynamicists have sought to find more ways of protecting the flow within the underbody tunnels and ensure that the car can build more downforce and retain stability. 

Although much of the VF-25 does appear familiar at first glance, the key details and refinements set it apart from last year’s car. Perhaps testament to that sits at the rear wing, where the leading edge corners of the upper wing surface where it attaches to the mainplane have been extruded forward.

This allows for a larger cut-out at the endplate, perhaps giving the team more latitude to play with vorticity here. This falls away to produce a much shorter-chord upper flap, perhaps to improve the wing’s overall efficiency. It’ll be interesting to see how this wing concept translates to the higher-downforce arrangements used for street circuits and the like.

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The AMR25 and VF-25 will take part in the Bahrain pre-season test which starts on Wednesday and concludes Friday, before the campaign’s opening race in Australia next month

Photo by: Aston Martin