Aston Martin's rise to success: Red Bull influence or independent progress?
May 23 - Team engineering boss Luca Furbatto insists Aston Martin's 2023 car is not a "copy" of the dominant Red Bull.
Aston Martin stunned the Formula 1 paddock this year by emerging as the most competitive team after Red Bull - ahead of usual top teams Mercedes and Ferrari.
Some have alleged that the 2023 car is a copy of Red Bull's.
"In reality, a copy is not possible because the two cars have two fundamentally different architectures," Furbatto told the Spanish daily Marca.
"We are using a power unit, gearbox and rear suspension from Mercedes."
Indeed, Aston Martin poached Mercedes' top aerodynamicist Eric Blandin, while new technical director Dan Fallows came from Red Bull.
"It's fair to say that Dan and Eric have brought a different approach to our aerodynamics and that, in terms of laptime, was probably an important step," Furbatto - who was Alfa Romeo's chief designer until last year - added.
"But if you look at last season, or the second half of last season, we had already achieved significant advances," he continued.
"We changed the aerodynamic concept in the sixth race last year and in February we started to launch some of the first parts before the Red Bull was launched," Furbatto insisted.
"We identified that we had indeed gone in the wrong direction from an aerodynamic point of view so we made a number of mechanical and aerodynamic improvements within the season and the car just got better and better.
"In the second part of the year we were probably fifth fastest and constantly in the points."
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Does their design and improvements really matter? If RB considered that AM were copying their design, then there would have been at least a protest lodged.
I think it's great for F1 that AM have improved and it now provides better and closer racing at the front of the field.
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