Aston Martin have played down any concerns of interruptions due to the opening of new facilities, which will occur over the course of 2023. Construction on the new site at their Silverstone base has been ongoing, with the AMR23 machine launched in the new building in February, and has so far delivered the team four podiums from five races to start the season. The team have broken into the so-called 'Big Three' of Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull, and are optimistic about the benefits of the new site becoming fully operational, which will start in the coming weeks with a new main building.
Aston's new factory
"It's a massive thing for us, we've been itching to get into that new factory ever since it was conceived really," Fallows told media, including RacingNews365. "Now you can see it all coming to fruition. We can see the layout of the drawing office, we can see how close everybody else is to where we're going to be. "We can't wait to get in there really." Following the opening of the first building, which contains new offices and pit bay facilities, the next phase will be the opening of the new wind tunnel. The complex nature of the installation and calibration of the equipment means there are fears it could disrupt the team's car development, but Fallows doesn't share those concerns. "We're looking to get into our wind-tunnel sort of in the latter part of next year," he said when asked by RacingNews365 when it would come online. "It is coming along great strides at the moment, but it is still on target for completion towards [the third quarter] of next year - and then we are hoping to transition over towards it. "We're going to have a particular time where we have a cut-off between [the two wind-tunnels]. "We will do our due diligence to make sure that when we have a handover date, it'll be as smooth as possible. "We can do a lot of the [verification] work with the existing car before we get in there, so will we do as much of that as we can."
Already thinking ahead
Aston finished seventh in the 2022 standings and have already exceeded their points total of 55 from the season - with the step made over the off-season propelling them from the midfield to second-best team behind the dominant Red Bull. This puts the team ahead of the schedule that driver Fernando Alonso envisaged, and although Fallows is happy with the result, he is already thinking about how the team can close the gap to Red Bull. "We targeted a big step, and we were quite aggressive about pursuing that target," he said. "It has been gratifying to see that we've made a big step on last year, and if we look at ourselves, at our relative place to the fastest car, which at the moment is Red Bull, we still have a way to go. "I mean, we are absolutely delighted that we've made a step that we were hoping for, but we need to look to make the next one."
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