Aston Martin's AMR22 hits the track for the first time

Aston Martin became the first team to run their 2022 F1 car, as they took their newly launched AMR22, to the track at Silverstone for a shakedown.

From all the teams that have launched their cars up to now, Aston Martin are the only team who have revealed the "real deal" 2022 car, and did not waste time to find out how it ran, as they used up one of the two days allocated for each team, for filming purposes.

The team completed the 100km of running allowed by the regulations with four-time F1 Champion Sebastian Vettel, and his teammate Lance Stroll sharing the driving duties.

At the launch event, Aston Martin's Chief Technical Officer, Andrew Green told the media: "What we wanted to do was shakedown as early as possible to check all the systems and that on the car.

"That gives us some time between shakedown and the Barcelona test. That was the reason for shaking down on Friday, so we have time to react.

"Hopefully we have a good shakedown and there's nothing to react to. But because the car is absolutely brand new, with no carryover at all, and pre-season testing is really short, and the second test is so close to the first race, that it's going to be almost impossible to react to, we thought it's good to get a shakedown in prior to the first test.

"It gives ourselves a good gap between the shakedown and the first test to react to," Green concluded.

With the shakedown behind them, Aston Martin will now look ahead to the first pre-season test at Barcelona between February 23 and 25.