Aston Martin Technical Director Dan Fallows believes Red Bull is “beatable” in Formula 1 and having a car that is compliant and versatile will be decisive in achieving that.
Red Bull has thrashed the opposition since F1 returned to ground effect aero in 2022, logging 39 wins from the past 44 races and sweeping successive championship doubles.
Meanwhile, Aston Martin capitalised on developing a version of the Austrian outfit’s downwash concept to emerge as its closest threat in the opening races of last season.
Although the Silverstone-based squad regressed once the European season commenced, the team has adopted a process of evolution with its AMR24 charger.
Heading into the third season under the latest regulations, Fallows anticipates that the competition will continue to converge upon Red Bull’s successful design scheme.
But while he admits that teams are now chasing minimal performance gains, the ex-Red Bull engineer reckons there’s sizeable time to unlock under this rules cycle.
When asked about the likelihood of teams replicating Red Bull’s title-winning RB19, Fallows told selected media including Motorsport Week ahead of its launch: “I think, inevitably, when you have a team that’s doing as well as Red Bull have done since 2022, it’s inevitable that there will be some kind of convergence on their solutions.
“I think, with the regulations that we have now, it is not particularly easy to have cars that are visually very different. So it’s inevitable, I think, that we would see some of that convergence.
“I think what’s in many ways more interesting is the convergence in lap times that we’ve seen, people are getting very close. And I think that sort of suggests that people are probably less able to take a big conceptual step away from the kind of things that we’re seeing on majority of cars.
“But I think that doesn’t detract from the interest of it. We’re really into finding lap time now from things that are smaller details, the more kind of detailed elements of the floor and other parts of the car.
“But there’s still a lot of lap time to come. And we take the approach that Red Bull are absolutely beatable, that’s what we’re chasing after we’re focusing on them, and that’s what we’re aiming for.”
Fallows has outlined that Aston Martin has made noticeable changes beneath the surface for 2024 that it hopes will prevent a repeat of the slump it endured last term.
Aston Martin has also strived to produce a car that is competitive across each circuit configuration on the calendar, with Fallows convinced that retaining such a platform is vital to eradicating the deficit to Red Bull.
“So we talk about Red Bull, because obviously they are the benchmark in terms of performance,” he added. “But really, for us, whoever’s the fastest car, that is the focus for us and that’s what we’re looking at.
“I think rather than thinking about individual races, from an engineering point of view, we have to make a car that’s capable of operating at any circuit and being competitive. And that’s really what we’re focused on, is making a car that’s usable, that’s good for the drivers and that’s what we’ve really been trying to focus on.
“Those sort of competitive stats, and how we get close to Red Bull will come after that.
“If we put that performance on the car, then we give ourselves the ability to compete at that level, which is exactly what we want.”
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