Aston Martin 'won't just replicate' what rivals are doing – Fallows

Aston Martin technical director Dan Fallows says the team must develop its own way of doing things and not just replicate what its rivals are doing if it wants to join the fight at the front of the field in the future.

Aston has engaged in an important recruitment drive since team owner Lawrence Stroll has affirmed his ambitions of developing his outfit into a top contender in F1.

Alongside the development and construction of a new state-of-the-art factory complex at Silverstone, the team has hired several high-profile individuals to boost its design and engineering department.

Fallows himself joined from Red Bull, while deputy technical director Eric Blandin and engineering director Luca Furbatto were poached from Mercedes and Alfa Romeo respectively.

But many other team personnel have moved from rival teams to to Aston in the past year, and the outfit is benefitting from the transfer of knowledge.

"We’re keen to learn from what other people do well," Fallows said in a recent meeting with the media.

"And it’s something I’ve always f ound, when you recruit people there is always something you can learn that other teams are doing, but also we’ve been fortunate enough to recruit some very talented and experienced people who have their own ideas about what makes a car go fast.

"The nice thing is they’ve come into this environment very open-minded, very willing to forge their own way of doing things using that experience, that collective experience, to go our own way."

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And Fallows obviously brought to Aston his own valuable experience and knowledge garnered over the years at Red Bull Racing.

"There’s a number of reasons why Red Bull are good," he said. "They’ve managed, over a period of years, to iron out issues in every aspect of the team, whether that be the race team, the manufacturing facilities, the design office, and a lot of building that kind of success is making sure there are no areas where you have substantial weaknesses.

"In many ways, I’m very proud that I was part of that on the engineering side. They’re an incredibly strong team, and I think that I do have that experience of what it means to win races and win championships.

"I think the key message is that you have to make sure that in every aspect of what you’re doing there are no holes, no things that you’re doing that can be compromising your performance as you go along."

Aston team principal Mike Krack underscored the team's progress throughout the 2022 season as a validation of the outfit's significant recruitment drive.

"I think it’s a very impressive recovery," he said. "You clearly see the impact of people like Dan joining and others, mixing with the people who were there already.

"I think we have a lot of momentum, and you feel that spirit when you come in here. I think honestly, we have reason to believe we can continue on that path. So all good from that point of view."

Under its former Racing Point guise, Aston was singled out as a team that made the most of its technical partnership with Mercedes, to the point where it produced for 2020 – much to the ire of its midfield rivals and of the FIA – a veritable clone of the Brackley squad's W10 2019 car.

And this year, a major update package introduced in Barcelona by Aston for its AMR22 featured a sidepod upgrade that bore a very strong resemblance to Red Bull's RB18.

But Fallows admits that Aston cannot take its design inspiration from its rivals if it aspires to fight at the front of the grid in the future. The team must exploit its own original ideas and uproot its own concepts.

"The important thing for us is to make sure we don’t just replicate what our competitors do. We don’t believe that is going to help us overtake the likes of Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari.

"So we have to develop our own way of doing things. That does take time, but we’ve got a hugely ambitious group of people, and one of the things about seeing the new factory come together is it demonstrates this momentum, this wish to kind of accelerate the process of moving up the grid and getting into a winning situation.

"And I think that’s what’s really going to help us get there, this passion, this motivation and this belief we will get there eventually."

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