Aston Martin admit ‘inevitable’ Red Bull inspiration as they launch AMR24

Aston Martin has admitted it is “inevitable” teams will take inspiration from Red Bull’s design as they launched their 2024 runner, the AMR24.

The Silverstone team has faced accusations of copying in the past when they unveiled a similar-looking car to Red Bull’s at the 2022 Spanish Grand Prix.

But they were not the only ones to converge on Red Bull’s design and as they launched their 2024 challenger, technical director Dan Fallows has admitted it is “inevitable” other teams have tried to emulate the championship winners.

Aston Martin admits ‘inevitable’ Red Bull inspiration for all teams

Fallows moved across from Red Bull to Aston Martin in April 2022 and it was his presence that led some to believe some data had been shared from Red Bull. That claim was denied by Aston Martin and later dropped by Red Bull but two seasons on, Fallows suggested it was “inevitable” the grid would begin to look like the RB19.

“When you have a team that’s doing as well as Red Bull has done since 2022, it’s inevitable that there will be some kind of convergence on their solutions,” Fallows told media including PlanetF1.com.

“I think, with the regulations that we have now, it is not particularly easy to have cars that are visually very different. So it’s inevitable, I think that we would see some of that convergence.”

“I think what’s in many ways more interesting is the convergence in lap times that we’ve seen. People are getting very close and I think that sort of suggests that people are probably less able to take a big conceptual step away from the kind of things that we’re seeing on the majority of cars.

“But I think that doesn’t detract from the interest of it. There’s the things that we’re really into finding lap times from now, which are things that are smaller details. They’re more detailed elements of the floor and other parts of the car but there’s still a lot of lap time to come.

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“We take the approach that Red Bull are absolutely beatable. That’s what we’re chasing after, we’re focusing on them and that’s what we’re aiming for.”

As for their own entry, Fallows said they have “made changes all over the car” and that it is a “strong evolution” of last year’s.

“It’s very different in many ways. The majority of the paths have changed on it but it is really still essentially a strong evolution of last year’s car. We have built on the end of AMR23.

“The obvious things you’ll see that is different are things like the front nose and front wing bodywork will be different. But there’s also obviously quite a lot of stuff under the hood, which you won’t see. We will obviously try and keep some of that under wraps.”

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