F1 2024 boost for Aston Martin after very strong start to 2023 campaign
Double World Champion Fernando Alonso drives the Aston Martin AMR23, side on view. Bahrain February 2023
Dan Fallows is hoping Aston Martin will be able to work on their 2024 car “as early as we possibly can” and described it as an “evolutionary step”.
After just five races, the AMR23 is already the most successful car in Aston Martin’s history having secured 80% of the team’s total podiums and that success could become even greater.
The last time the team, then under the Racing Point name, won a race was Sergio Perez’s shock victory in Sakhir in 2020 but Fernando Alonso’s early season form in 2023 suggests that could soon be replicated.
It would take some doing though considering the advantage Red Bull currently enjoy, but if Aston Martin fail to win a race this year, the season would still be a remarkable success considering their 2022 P7 finish.
As with all teams, there is always one eye on the future and although it is too soon to abandon development of the AMR23, technical director Fallows did concede he hoped to start work on next year’s car, suspected to be called the AMR24, “as early as we possibly can.”
“We definitely want to start next’s year car as early as we possibly can. The game really for us is to make sure that we don’t sacrifice this year’s car,” he said, as per RaceFans.
“Inevitably it will be a form of evolution of this year’s car. So everything we can do to get data, to get updates on this year’s car will certainly inform it. But yes, we will be looking to start as early as possible.”
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With no major rules changes confirmed yet for the 2024 season, the AMR23’s successor will be an “evolutionary step”, says Fallows. However he said the team “don’t want to be any less aggressive with the way we go about developing this car than we were going into this year.”
The transformation of the AMR22 to the AMR23 is one of the most sudden and remarkable in F1 history and speaking following pre-season testing, Fallows told media including PlanetF1.com that “aggressive targets” had been set and met.
“We are pleased with our goal,” the former Red Bull head of aerodynamics said. “We targeted making a big step up on last year’s car so in terms of performance relative to that, we’re definitely happy that we have made a step towards that.
“We set aggressive targets for ourselves and we believe we’ve largely hit those. We came out of testing, believing that we do have a car that we could work with. Where we sit relative to other people, we simply don’t know.”