“Bold and aggressive” - Aston Martin’s 2023 F1 car influenced by Red Bull

Like many teams who have unveiled their F1 2023 cars, the sidepods have been a key area of focus.

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As you’d expect, teams have looked at Ferrari, and particularly Red Bull, last year and used their 2022 cars as inspiration. 

Visually, the sidepod area on the new AMR23 is similar to Red Bull’s RB18, although Fallows was quick to point out that it wasn’t the only area of focus for the team over the winter.

“We went into this year trying to be bold and aggressive, to try to take on the lessons from last year,” Fallows told the media including Crash.net.

“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. The sideboards are quite a big area of difference.

“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, 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.”

While Aston Martin have been influenced by Red Bull’s title-winning RB18, they continue to use Mercedes’ gearbox casing.

Fallows denied that their use of Mercedes parts was a “handicap” for them.

“We’re very fortunate to have a partnership with Mercedes and to be able to use their expertise in our car,” Fallows said.

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“Honestly it hasn’t been a handicap for us at all having their parts. It’s been a big boost for us.

“They clearly do their own development. Wwe have to be able to put our aerodynamic surfaces on their rear suspension as well so it’s not entirely theirs from a from an aerodynamic point of view.

“So no, honestly, I don’t think it’s a handicap for us at all."