Although Max Verstappen is the driver who has grabbed all the limelight due to his relentless domination over the past few seasons, he would not have reached this stage had it not been for Red Bull’s beast-like cars. The Milton-Keynes-based outfit has produced some of the quickest cars during the recent era of ground-effect regulations thanks to the efforts of Adrian Newey and Co. It is for the same reason that several teams have been keen to sign him. As per reports, the latest side is Aston Martin. Amidst such rumors, Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack has interestingly denied any attempt to poach Newey from Red Bull.
When asked if Aston Martin had approached Newey, Krack replied (as quoted by mirror.co.uk) with a smile, “No”. When pressed on the same further, the 52-year-old went on to praise his own technical team.
Krack added, “Look, we have a very strong technical team with Dan [Fallows], with Tom [McCullough], with Luca [Furbatto]. We were joined lately by Bob Bell. We’re quite happy with what we have at the moment”.
Interestingly, Fallows is one of the key senior figures whom Aston Martin poached from Red Bull. The 50-year-old worked alongside Adrian Newey for a while at Red Bull and was a key figure in designing some of the team’s championship-winning cars. Hence, it is no surprise why Aston Martin’s AMR23 looked similar to Red Bull’s RB19 last season.
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner even joked last season that the AMR23 was his side’s “old car“ and that he was happy to see it perform well. Moreover, it was not just Horner from Red Bull who took a dig at Aston Martin.
Red Bull leaders took a dig at Aston Martin last season
Since Red Bull produced an utterly dominant car last season, several of their rivals began imitating the RB19’s design. Reports claimed that Aston Martin was one of them.
With Fernando Alonso having grabbed multiple podiums for Aston Martin last season, the likes of Christian Horner, Helmut Marko, and even Sergio Perez could not resist taking a dig at the Silverstone-based team. For example, Horner said (as quoted by Autosport), “Imitation is the biggest form of flattery and it is good to see the old car going so well”.
Similarly to Horner, even Helmut Marko took a sly dig at Aston Martin. After Fernando Alonso joined Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez on the podium for the 2023 Bahrain Grand Prix, the Austrian claimed that it was nice for him to see “three Red Bulls” finish in the top three.
Perez also made a similar remark to Marko as he cheekily claimed during the post-race press conference that three Red Bulls had finished on the podium. On hearing the same, both Verstappen and Alonso could not help but smile.
