Aston Martin are going into the new season confident last season’s dominant champions Red Bull can be caught.
The Silverstone-based team stunned Formula 1 with its progress at the beginning of last year. Having ended 2022 seventh in the constructors’ championship, Aston Martin began last season as the closest rivals to Red Bull, scoring a string of podium finishes.But while Red Bull stamped their authority all over the championship, winning 21 of the 22 grands prix, Aston Martin faltered at mid-season and fell to fifth place in the final standings. Nonetheless they are confident they can make gains on Red Bull again this year as they and other teams adopt the champions’ design solutions into their cars.
“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,” said technical director Dan Fallow, who joined Aston Martin from Red Bull in 2022.
“With the regulations that we have now, it is not particularly easy to have cars that are visually very different,” he told media including RaceFans yesterday. “So it’s inevitable, I think, that we would see some of that convergence.”
The gap between Red Bull and their rivals was already beginning to narrow towards the end of 2023, Fallows believes.
“People are getting very close and I think that suggests that people are probably less able to take a big conceptual step away from the kind of things that we’re seeing on the majority of cars,” he said.
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Aston Martin are “really into finding lap times from things that are smaller details, the more detailed elements of the floor and other parts of the car,” he explained.
Last year Aston Martin found the performance of their car varied too much from track to track. One objective for the AMR24 was therefore to make it more adaptable to the range of venues it will tackle.
“We talk about Red Bull because obviously they are the benchmark in terms of performance,” Fallows explained. “But really for us, whoever’s got the fastest car is the focus for us and that’s what we’re looking at.
“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 focussed on, making a car that’s usable, that’s good for the drivers, that’s what we’ve really been trying to focus on.
“Those competitive stats and how we get close to Red Bull will come after that. If we put that performance on the car then we have given ourselves the ability to compete at that level, which is exactly what we want.”
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Fernando Alonso scored almost three-quarters of the team’s points last year and put one over Red Bull’s drivers from time to time, notably in Brazil where he performed a celebrated last lap re-pass on Sergio Perez for the final podium place. He said Fallows’ declaration Red Bull are beatable “puts a smile on my face”, but noted their other rivals may have also closed the gap during the off-season.
“We have to be optimistic at this part of the season,” said Alonso. “We saw last year as well Ferrari finished really strong and achieved a few pole positions in the last part of the year. McLaren also did a huge step during the season and got closer to the Red Bull in a few races. So let’s see what happens.
“I think we have to be regularly in the points first, fighting for podiums, or be a contender for podiums as we did last year. And then if we are in that position it will be lovely to achieve the first victory in green for Aston Martin and hopefully I can be behind the wheel at that moment.
“But I think we have to go step by step. It’s going to be very tight. There are four or five teams within two or three tenths of the second this year, I bet. So that will put you with two-tenths of a second fighting for podiums or fighting out of the top ten. So we need to be really focused on that.”
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BasCB (@bascb)
12th February 2024, 8:49
Good to see the team being confident. I hope it lasts through testing and the start of the season.
DB-C90 (@dbradock)
12th February 2024, 9:46
Funny, I was thinking the opposite. Far better to reserve your confidence until at least testing is done.
However, what they said is probably true. RBR is beatable. Probably not by them, and probably not this season, but at some point in the future they’ll be beaten.
Jeanrien (@jeanrien)
12th February 2024, 10:08
You mean going like Haas and making the bold prediction to start in last? Lately teams have been a bit too conservative and playing the underdog the whole time but it lacks the ambition that F1 should bring.
If you don’t aim for the top, you have no chance to reach it!
Asd
12th February 2024, 11:02
“If you don’t aim for the top, you have no chance to reach it!”
– So what? Only a few teams care about the top. The others aim at producing good enough results to make good business, to grow financially and successfully promote their brand and their sponsors. That’s all they need and that’s all the want. Of course, they would welcome all possible success beyond that, who wouldn’t, but thinking about it is redundant.
Ken
12th February 2024, 11:11
Half of the grid is not few ,if even not more.
S
12th February 2024, 11:20
That ambition need not be displayed publicly – choosing to act with modesty is not a sign of weakness. It could be a sign of strength, power, maturity, and open-mindedness.
Besides – ‘success’ is a very open concept, and can exist entirely independent of ambition.
asz
12th February 2024, 20:39
Or simple cowardice.
99% choose to be (falsely) modest. This is not because there is such an abundance of strength and maturity distributed within the population, but because most people are afraid of the backlash if their optimism doesn’t produce results.
Ludewig
12th February 2024, 12:12
@jeanrien
I’m not really seeing all that much confidence. They are merely saying that they are chasing after Red Bull and are improving, which all of them are saying. It doesn’t mean that they expect to beat Red Bull this season or within a few years.
Alonso says that he hopes that he will still be behind the wheel when they get a race victory, which at the very least means that he’s not confident that they will get a single race victory in 2024. Winning the championship requires many race victories.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
12th February 2024, 17:34
Yes, unless you’re keke rosberg, who did it with a single victory, but with seasons now being 50% longer than back then I guess it’d be an even rarer feat.
Ludewig
13th February 2024, 8:43
@esploratore1
That season had immensely unreliability of cars, lots of teams close to each other and even then, Rosberg merely won due to Pironi getting injured. So all the stars aligned for that to happen.
And I can’t be bothered to calculate it, but with the current points distribution he might not have won either.
Ross
13th February 2024, 5:09
A Red Bull is definitely beatable. I’m not so sure about the other one.
Tristan (@skipgamer)
12th February 2024, 11:16
This is what I’m looking for from this season to come. Everyone talks about the pace of Red Bull and how far ahead they were but that wasn’t the biggest issue with competitiveness that I saw. Bar Red Bull they were all faster at one track, slower the next, saying the next track should suit their car, getting knocked out in Q2, saying the opposite about the next track and finishing on the podium.
If they’re similarly inconsistent and seemingly confused in the year to come, then that’ll be a bigger warning sign to me that Red Bull are just leagues ahead. We’ll see what Fallows’ focus on this area brings!
Jere (@jerejj)
12th February 2024, 12:18
Good optimism, but hopefully also realistic.
AlexS
12th February 2024, 14:51
These studio photos are so horrible.