New Aston Martin aero chief doesn’t want to copy former team Red Bull

Fallows started work with Aston Martin in April 2022 after deciding to leave Red Bull last year.

The 49-year-old spent 16 years at Red Bull, playing an integral role in their successful years with Sebastian Vettel in the early 2010s and more recently with Max Verstappen.

Fallows was a big coup by Aston Martin, who are headed by billionaire Lawrence Stroll.

Stroll has big ambitions of making Aston Martin a title-winning outfit, demonstrated by the significant upgrades made to the team’s factory.

In 2022, the team were criticised for copying Red Bull’s RB18 aero concept when they introduced their new car at the Spanish Grand Prix.

Fallows is keen for Aston Martin’s success to come down to their own innovation, rather than copying the top teams.

“The important thing for us is to make sure that we don’t just replicate what our competitors are doing,” he said.

“We don’t believe that’s going to help us overtake the likes of Mercedes, Red Bull or Ferrari. So we have to develop our own way of doing things and that does take time.

“We’ve got a hugely ambitious group of people and one of the things about seeing the new factory come together is it demonstrates this momentum, this vision, this wish to kind of accelerate the process of moving up the grid and starting to get into a winning situation.

“I think that’s what’s really going to help us get there is this passion, this motivation and this belief that we will get there eventually.”

Fallows also explained why Red Bull have been so successful over the last 12 years.

There are a number of reasons why Red Bull are as good as they are,” he added. “They’ve managed to, over a period of years, iron out issues in every aspect of the team. So whether that be the race team, the manufacturing facilities, the design office.

“A lot of building that kind of success is making sure that there are no areas where you have substantial weaknesses. I’m very proud that I was part of that on the engineering side.

“They’re an incredibly strong team. I do have an experience of what it means to win races and win championships and I think really the key message is that you just have to make sure that with every aspect of what you’re doing there are no holes, there are no things which you’re doing that can be compromised or can compromise your performance as you go along.”