Aston Martin Formula 1 Technical Director Dan Fallows has explained how he has tried to emulate Adrian Newey in his new role. Fallows was a long-time Newey lieutenant at Red Bull before leaving in 2022 to take up the top technical job at Aston Martin, as the Silverstone-based squad expand and build up to what they hope is a championship challenge. The new AMR23 is the first Aston with a design fully lead by Fallows and looked strong during pre-season testing, with the team having made steps forward towards the upper midfield and were nibbling at the heels of Mercedes. Talk of the car being a 'Green Red Bull' are wide of the mark, although Fallows has admitted that he has brought some of Newey's personnel skills with him to Aston.
Fallows on Newey skills
"I'm one of the fortunate people that have worked under Adrian and have seen his methods," Fallows told media, including RacingNews365 . "He has a very clear approach to the way he designs and develops a car, particularly from the aerodynamic side of things - and we're all aware that it is a sort of 'no compromise' approach, and very focused on small details. "One of the things that I really enjoyed with him is that he lacks any kind of technical arrogance, he's very open to being told about ideas or things that haven't worked or that there are better ideas out there. "Irrespective of where those ['Green Red Bull'] comments come from, I definitely tried to bring my own work, and I've very much encouraged a lot of the technical team to be open-minded. "Even if you have very clear visions about how you want to develop things or very clear ideas about a car, [you need] to make sure you're not technically arrogant about it. "If somebody does suggest something better, be open-minded, irrespective of who they are. "That is one of [Newey's] great strengths, and hopefully I can sort of carry that on."
Cars will converge
The technical regulations that were introduced in 2022 were prescriptive in the hope that the field could be closed up. Over the winter and into 2023 testing, it became clear that a majority of the field had decided to go down a route similar to Red Bull's dominant RB18 machine - but Fallows believes this is "inevitable" due to the rules. "I don't really want to labour the point about the regulations, but there is a certain amount of restriction on it, and it is inevitable that some cars are going to look very similar," he explained. "Actually there are very small details, as there are with any set of regulations, which make a huge difference. "Sometimes those things aren't necessarily visible, so I think we will see cars converge, there's just no doubt that that will happen over any set of regulations. "Whether we converge on one or two distinct designs from the very visible aspects remains, that remains to be seen. "What we've seen over the last year is that some teams have elected to go down one of the two very obvious development philosophies and really started to make that work, so they'll probably carry on doing that."
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