Among the most cited reasons for explaining the impressive leap forward made by Aston Martin in performance between last season and the current Formula 1 championship – starting with four podium finishes in the first five races, after finishing only seventh in the Constructors’ Championship in 2021 and 2022 – is the hiring of Dan Fallows.
The former right-hand man of Adrian Newey at Red Bull has been the new technical director of Lawrence Stroll’s team for just over a year now.
Leap forward
The results achieved by Dan Fallows and his team are there for all to see: Aston Martin has become the second force on the grid within a year, behind a seemingly unbeatable Red Bull, but ahead of automotive giants like Mercedes and Ferrari. These two teams, in particular, seem to be desperately searching for a technical identity after their respective concepts, developed at the beginning of last season, are not leading them to the desired performances.
Mercedes and Ferrari, confused ideas
Both the “zero sidepods” idea developed in Brackley and the “wide” and “scooped” side pods idea developed in Maranello do not seem sufficient to contain the supremacy displayed by Adrian Newey’s Red Bull RB19. For these reasons, both Ferrari and Mercedes seem ready to introduce very significant technical innovations in the upcoming races – starting from Imola – probably destined to overturn the very idea of the two cars.
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Difficult revolutions
However, interviewed by the Pit Debrief website, Dan Fallows expressed skepticism about this hypothesis, emphasizing how it is not at all easy to completely overturn the concept of a car, especially after a long period of development: “Once you have taken the path of an aerodynamic concept, it is very difficult to change it radically,” warned Dan Fallows. “There are conceptual differences between us and Ferrari, for example, and Mercedes. At the moment, we have a very similar pace – he added – I think it would be difficult for one of these two teams to say that they have gone in the wrong direction or that they would like to change. It will be interesting to see if anyone will make changes. The more time passes, the harder they are to make.” – the Aston Martin technical director concluded.
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