Aston Martin is only worth winning. The Silverstone team has made a great start to the season in 2023, achieving four podiums in the first five racesand confirming its progression by settling in second position in the constructors’ championship.
A year ago, the English were the ninth team on the grid, just ahead of williams. A year later, not only have they surpassed the teams in the middle zone, but they have been imposed on Ferrari and Mercedeswho won races in 2022. In fact, the green team is right now the main candidate to break the dominance of Red Bull.
But second place is not enough. Lawrence Stroll has made a multi-million dollar investment to turn Aston Martin into a winning team, and to do so it is building a factory and a wind tunnel that they have nothing to envy to the facilities of their competitors.
It was that winning mentality that made Fernando Alonso was decided by Aston Martin in 2022, and the one that caught the attention of three of the engineers who have developed the AMR223: Dan Fallows, Eric Blandin and Luca Furbatto.
“The perspective of Aston Martin…”
The Italian, who until 2021 was head of engineering at alfa romeo, decided to join Aston Martin to see the ambition of Lawrence Stroll. “Aston Martin’s perspective, along with growth and the ability to compete to win, was what attracted me to signing for them. It’s not just about seeing the performance of the car, but the limitations of the current facilities and how we can improve them. , but our goal is to be world champions“, declared Luca Furbatto in ‘Marca’.
Furbatto has been in the design of the AMR23 from the start. He assures that, despite the influence of Dan Fallows, the Aston Martin is not a copy of the Red Bull, as the Austrian team has assured.
“A similar copy, in reality, is not possible because the two cars are fundamentally two different architectures: we are using a power unit, a gearbox and a rear suspension from Mercedes,” explains the Italian engineer.
“It’s fair to say that Dan Fallows and Eric Blandin have brought a different approach to our aerodynamics. and that, in terms of lap time, it’s probably an important step. But if you look at last season, the second half of last season, we had already made significant progress.”
“The motivation is there”
The engineering director explains how the process was to reverse the bad start in 2022 and fight for the podiums in 2023: “Iwe identified that indeed, we had taken the wrong direction from an aerodynamic point of view. We made a number of mechanical improvements, as well as aerodynamic improvements, in the season and the car just got better and better. In the second part of the year we were probably fifth fastestconstantly in the points”.
However, at Aston Martin they are not satisfied with being second and are already looking towards the first position. “We are all calm in the team, we all want to succeed and move the team forwardso the motivation is there,” Furbatto assured.
