Aston Martin technical director Dan Fallows believes that the team has made a “strong improvement” with its 2024 Formula 1 challenger.
The Silverstone-based squad surprised the field when it emerged as a front-running force in the early stages of the 2023 season.
Two-time World Champion Fernando Alonso stormed to six podium finishes in the opening eight rounds. However, development of the AMR23 stalled with a series of compromised upgrades seeing the team slump from second to fifth in the championship despite two further podiums from the Spaniard.
2024 has welcomed several major concept changes amongst rivals, but Aston Martin has focused on an evolution of the fast-starting AMR23 as the team hopes to secure its place in the top order.
“When we went into this season really looking for a step over the winter, we wanted to make sure we did get an improvement,” said Aston Martin technical director Dan Fallows.
“Even though it’s an evolution of last year’s car, we wanted it to be a strong improvement as well as a strong evolution. And, we have seen that step, we’ve seen that benefit. So we’re very pleased about that.
“I think the most important thing for us is where we go from here. We weren’t 100% pleased with what we achieved in our in-season development last year. And we wanted to make sure we can compete at the top level in terms of in-season as well.
“I think we were mostly keen on making sure we made a step on last year, which we have done. So I think we can certainly tick that box.”
Speaking at the launch of the AMR24, Alonso asserted that his team needed to find improvements in top-end speed and downforce for high-speed cornering.
“We had some things that we focused on over the winter in terms of making the car good to drive, making the balance good,” Fallows said in response when asked about Alonso’s hopes.
“And I think we’re reasonably happy with where we are now. We know we’ve always got things to improve, which is why we go back into the wind tunnel and why we go back to the drawing board to do those things.
“But so far, I think we’ve achieved a lot in three days [of] testing, done a lot of test items, and we’re pretty pleased with the outcome.”
Team principal Mike Krack was also pleased with his team’s pre-season running, saying: “It was a very, very good test for us. Three days, I think the only interruptions we had was with the red flags.
“I think we can be quite happy. The car was in a really good state when it arrived here, very reliable, high-quality parts.
“We could do all of our work that we had scheduled to every day. Now, it’s about digging, getting through the whole days to understand all the results that we have achieved, and we’re looking forward to go to the first race.”
Asked where he expects the team to sit in the pecking order, Krack replied cautiously: “We need to look into the next days, get all the full analysis, and it will be over the next days that we get a clearer picture as well.
“I think it was quite important for us that we look at ourselves, we have quite a big programme, and we cannot influence anyway what others are doing. And now it’s about the analysis, and also trying to understand what others did.
“If you go through the full range of track conditions, fuel loads, engine modes, tyres, we had all the five tyre specs here, I think you can cover a range of five seconds. To then discern who’s ahead by how much I think it’s really, really tough.”
