15/02/2023
NEWS STORY
Insisting that success doesn't come by "sitting back and being conservative", Aston Martin technical director, Dan Fallows explains the "aggressive" approach to the team's 2023 contender.
While much of the attention at Monday's launch was on new recruit Fernando Alonso, another 'newbie' to the Silverstone squad is equally keen to make his mark.
Though, following the wrangle with his former employer Red Bull, where he was chief engineer - aerodynamics, saw him come in from the garden and take up his new role with Aston Martin last April, it was too late to have any significant impact on the team's 2022 contender.
However, the AMR23 is a different story, with Fallows involved from the outset, and making clear in the press release that accompanied the launch: "We want to move up the grid and start challenging the teams at the front... and you can't do that by sitting back and being conservative."
He subsequently explained the team's aggressive approach to its new car.
"The side boards are quite a big area of difference," he told the media. "I wouldn't say that's been our majority focus, I think there are improvements and changes throughout the whole car.
"There's obviously quite a lot that you can't see," he added. "Underneath the skin there's quite substantial engineering improvements to a lot of the mechanical components as well as the aerodynamics.
"There's obviously a lot of other aspects of the aerodynamics, which I'm rather hoping you can't see as well just yet.
"So while the sidepods are an obvious thing from a visual point of view, that's one of the areas that we've worked on. But I think it does demonstrate the sort of quite aggressive approach we've taken to this development of this car.
"The AMR23 is very, very different from last year" he insisted. "Around 95% of the car is actually completely different from AMR22.
"We went into this year, this development phase, trying to be bold, trying to be aggressive and trying to take on the lessons from last year."
Despite the restraints of the budget cap, Fallows promises a strong programme in terms of updates.
"This is a fundamental basis for the development we'd like to do. It is definitely a step on last year's car, but we always see that this is a platform to keep developing on. Consequently, I would say you could expect up to two-thirds of the car to be different by the time we get to the end of the season. It's as much of that.
"We are always looking to be ambitious about the changes that we make so I think we need to look at it. By the time we get to the end of this season, we'll be looking back on this car and thinking... 'oh, that looks so old now'."
Check out our AMR23 gallery, here.