Aston Martin Racing Director, Andrew Fallows, spoke about the team’s current position in the constructors’ world championship table and their plans for the future. Despite being outpaced on occasion by rivals Ferrari and Mercedes, the team is currently in second place, and Fallows believes that the AMR23 can be improved in all aspects.
Chasing Red Bull’s Dominance
Fallows says that it is natural that the Silverstone outfit eyes the currently-dominant Red Bull as a reference, and he admits that the AMR23 can be improved in all aspects. The Red Bull as a concept has been evolved for a bit longer than theirs, and the team is still developing their car. They believe they have made a very big step this year, but they still have a little way to go. And they want to improve everything to get closer to Red Bull.
Optimizing the Car for Every Circuit
The team needs to optimize their car for every particular circuit, which means that sometimes there may be aspects of whether it’s low-speed, high-speed corners, which aren’t quite as strong as some other competitors. Fallows indicated that the Aston Martin is a good all-round car, with no particular vices. They can tune it to what they believe is the optimum for that particular track. There are certainly areas that they are focused on improving from an aerodynamic and mechanical point of view that they think they can make progress. But honestly, he doesn’t look at it as a car that has any significant weaknesses at the moment. They want to build on the speed they have and keep going with the same philosophy.
Maximizing Performance
Fallows says the team shouldn’t focus too much on straight-line speed and DRS performance, which has been the great strength of Red Bull so far in 2023. Other teams have also erred towards ultra-low drag packages. They look to optimize their lap time on every track they go to. They do have to be a little bit conscious of what everybody else is doing as well, as they don’t want to be miles out of bed on their top speed. But honestly, they try to focus on what they think is the quickest ultimate lap time and why they think it’s the quickest race as well. That’s really been their focus, rather than what other people are doing around them.
Looking Ahead
Asked if Aston can win on merit this season, Fallows noted that he’d love to say that a win is possible this season. There are obviously some circuits where it’s not the normal run of play necessarily, sometimes cars have particular characteristics that can play out. For example in Monaco, tracks like that. But honestly, he thinks they’re realistic about their situation, where they are at the moment. Their focus is really on just maximizing the amount of performance they get on the car in the shortest possible time. And they’ll see what kind of rewards that brings.
The team doesn’t want to sacrifice 2023 by switching focus to next season too early. They definitely want to start next year’s car as early as they possibly can. The game really for them is to make sure that they don’t sacrifice this year’s car. Inevitably, it will be a form of evolution of this year’s car. So everything they can do to get data, to get updates on this year’s car, will certainly inform that. But they will be looking to start as early as possible. He also acknowledged that stable rules for 2024 mean that any gains made with the AM23 can be carried over to next season. They can treat it as a sort of evolutionary step. They don’t want to be any less aggressive with the way they go about developing this car than they were going into this year.
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