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The Aston Martin AMR24 is an evolution of last year’s design but, according to the team’s technical director Dan Fallows, is a step forward.
Aston Martin was an early-season sensation last year as it emerged as the nearest challenger to the all-conquering Red Bull Racing RB19.
Its challenge waned during the year, however, before a late-season recovery saw it recapture some of its earlier form.
Looking to 2024, Fallows believes his team has been able to continue that development path with the new car.
“We’ve made changes all over the car,” he told invited media, including Speedcafe.
“It’s very different in many ways, where majority of the parts have changed on it.
“But it is really still essentially a strong evolution of last year’s car, so we have built on the end of AMR23.
“The obvious things you’ll see that are different are things like the front nose and front wing bodywork,” he added.
“There’s obviously quite a lot of stuff under the hood, which hopefully you won’t see.
“We will obviously try and keep some of that under wraps.”
Aston Martin finished fifth in the constructors’ championship after it was overhauled by McLaren in the latter stages of the 2023 campaign.
It was the Silverstone operation’s best result since 2020, when it was known as Racing Point, and saw Fernando Alonso come close to victory at the Monaco Grand Prix in a slew of podium places.
The AMR24 persists with the same front suspension as its predecessor with a push rod configuration.
There are, however, changes at the rear owing to an updated gearbox from Mercedes and the resulting differences in the mounting points.
“That has changed slightly from last year,” Fallows admitted.
“So there’s a change on the rear, but the front is very similar.”
The hope is that the updated car will propel Aston Martin into contention with Red Bull Racing, which is again expected to be the class leader in 2024.
“We talk about Red Bull because obviously they are the benchmark in terms of performance,” Fallows said.
“Really, for us, whoever’s the fastest car is the focus for us, and that’s what we’re looking at.
“Rather than thinking about individual races, from an engineering point of view, we have to make a car that’s capable of operating at any circuit and being competitive,” he clarified,
“That’s really what we’re focused on, is making a car that’s usable, that’s good for the drivers.
“Those sort of competitive stats and how we get close to Red Bull will come after that.
“If we put that performance on the car, then we give ourselves the ability to compete at that level, which is exactly what we want.”
Fallows worked with Red Bull Racing before joining Aston Martin in April 2022, with many of the solutions on the Silverstone-built machine similar to that of his former employer.
“When you have a team that’s doing as well as Red Bull have done since 2022, it’s inevitable that there will be some kind of convergence on their solutions,” the Aston Martin technical boss reasoned.
“With the regulations that we have now, it is not particularly easy to have cars that are visually very different.
“What’s in many ways more interesting is the convergence in lap times that we’ve seen.
“People are getting very close, and I think that sort of suggests people are probably less able to take a big conceptual step away from the kind of things that we’re seeing on the majority of cars.
“We’re really into finding lap times now from things that are smaller details, the more kind of detailed elements of the floor and other parts of the car.
“But there’s still lap time to come, and we take the approach that Red Bull are absolutely beatable.
“That’s what we’re chasing after, we’re focusing on them, and that’s what we’re aiming for.”
The AMR24 will run on track for the first time today ahead of pre-season testing beginning in Bahrain next Wednesday with Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll set to share the duties.
