Aston Martin managed to shock the entire F1 world when they started the season on a high, claiming consecutive podiums race after race. However, with the team’s performances currently going on a downward trajectory, as per a recent report by F1Maximaal, Former F1 driver Ralf Schumacher has given an explanation for the team’s downfall.
As per Schumacher, both of the rise and fall of Aston Martin can be attributed to one man – Dan Fallows. The British engineer was recruited by Aston Martin from Red Bull and he has been serving as their technical director since 2022.
Like many other around the grid, Schumacher believes that Fallows had a major role to play in getting the Aston Martin car up to speed so that they could perform like they did at the start of the season. Schumacher explained that Fallows had brought over a lot of knowledge from his Red Bull days, which had helped the Silverstone outfit during their early days in 2023.
However, Schumacher now suspects that Fallows has managed to exhaust his Red Bull knowledge and that is why Aston Martin are suffering as of late. He said, “But what if former Red Bull man Fallows was able to transfer a lot of information from Red Bull to this year’s car, and the barrel is now empty because he knew too little about the most recent progress?”
Aston Martin lost their way midway through season
Aston Martin had started the 2023 season on a roll, with Fernando Alonso managing to claim 6 podium finishes in the first 8 races. However, things started to fall apart after the Austrian GP and while Alonso did manage to score another podium at the Dutch GP, he couldn’t regain the form that he started the season with.
The team believes that the main reason behind this is that their development packages did not work like they were supposed to. Fallows admitted ahead of the United States GP that the balance of the car had been disturbed by their upgrades which led to the backfire.
Another factor that might have hampered the performance of the AMR23 was the FIA banning the flexi wing concept in the middle of the season. It was believed that Aston Martin and Red Bull were amongst the teams who were hit badly due to the ruling.
However, despite everything, one thing that has remained constant at Aston Martin is Fernando Alonso’s dominance over Lance Stroll. While the Spaniard did not manage to claim his 33rd race win, he admitted has is extremely proud of the team and the work that they have put in. It is expected that Aston Martin would be able to learn from their mistakes and come back much stronger next season.
