Why Red Bull clone criticisms of Aston’s F1 challenger are invalid

Let the record show that when Aston Martin whipped the covers off its 2023 challenger way back on 13 February, claims the team might have simply copied Red Bull were far thinner on the ground. It was an extremely convincing testing display that ignited the gamesmanship as rivals began to insinuate last year’s title-winning RB18 had been gone over with tracing paper. The furore only intensified when Fernando Alonso humbled Mercedes and Ferrari to kick off the campaign with consecutive podiums.

In the immediate aftermath of Alonso chalking third behind runaway victor Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez in the Bahrain opener, Perez twice joked Red Bull had finished 1-2-3. Then team advisor Helmut Marko pointedly asked: “Can you copy in such detail without having documentation of our car?” Perhaps persuaded by legal counsel, the Austrian soon backtracked from directly accusing Aston technical director Dan Fallows of leaving his previous Red Bull post in the summer of 2021 with a USB stick loaded with data. Apparently, Marko was “just joking”.

PLUS: How Aston Martin broke into F1’s lead pack

Aside from avoiding a courtroom, might Red Bull’s most prolific quote factory have been right to tone it down chiefly because the AMR23 doesn’t actually mimic last season’s standout creation all that closely? Put the pair side-by-side and the Aston has a far tighter engine cover and more curved front and rear wings. The longer and larger nose for 2023 is more reminiscent of Haas. As for the sidepods, if anything, Lawrence Stroll’s merry band of designers have been more reliant on Mercedes’ size-zero package than Red Bull to sculpt the top surfaces.

Courtesy of running a customer Merc powertrain, Aston has been able to look to its donor for inspiration on the layout of the engine cooling package. Whereas Mercedes uses a shrink-wrapped design to maximise the floor surface area to best exploit ground effects, Aston has used the tight arrangement to instead beat Adrian Newey at his own downwash game by filling the free space with ramps to create its more aggressive so-called ‘slidepods’.

The result is the sizeable cut-outs are more akin to the Ferrari bathtub model. Fallows and former Mercedes chief aerodynamicist Eric Blandin have worked to channel as much air as possible to the rear diffuser. Even with the front inlet featuring the trademark Red Bull underbite, there’s as much Maranello as there is Milton Keynes on show around the side of the AMR23. What’s more, McLaren and Alpine already dabbled with a similar design in 2022.

While traits of Red Bull can be spotted in the Aston Martin, there are also design similarities to both Ferrari and Mercedes

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Rather than Aston having copied Red Bull’s homework, this melting pot of ideas is the natural outcome of Fallows and Blandin coming together, says team performance director Tom McCullough. He tells GP Racing: “One had been at Red Bull and one at Mercedes. They were very much like, we want to do this in what Dan refers to as the Aston Martin way, which is to listen to everything. Let’s get the input from two different ways of developing a car and then look at where we need to improve and what is the best way of doing that. That’s the reality, which is why the [Aston and Red Bull] do look quite different really, if you look at a lot of the areas of the cars.”

The public fixation has been with sidepods because they are where design differentiation is most apparent. This had led to them being wrongly conflated with directly determining who is hot and who is not. Instead, it’s the underfloor manipulation of the air that does the heavy lifting in this ground-effects era of F1. Engineers reckon what you can see makes up 40% of the cars’ performance, while 60% is governed by what’s going on underneath. Hence mechanics go to great lengths to cover the floor vanes from prying photographers when accompanying broken-down cars which must be craned onto a flatbed.

"Last year, we started a certain way. It wasn’t the right way. We accepted that and we changed that" Tom McCullough, Aston Martin team performance director

The idea that the Aston Martin and Red Bull differ more significantly than first realised is seemingly supported by how the two cars go about generating their quick lap times. GPS data reveals the RB19 to be fantastically customisable: Red Bull is able to top the speed traps at one circuit then pull clear through downforce-dependent corners next time out.

The AMR23 is much more consistent. It’s draggy, somewhat asthmatic north of 180mph. But it consistently sets the standard under braking and through the slowest corners where mechanical grip proves decisive.

But, even with plenty of variances apparent, there’s no wondering why Aston has faced allegations of plagiarism. The Silverstone squad set the precedent early last season by abandoning its initial, lacklustre concept to debut an effective B-spec machine as early as round six in Barcelona. This was the first case of any team making such a major departure from what it had previously presented and converging around the optimum philosophy, which was the RB18. Thanks to some familiar-looking downwash sidepods, so came the ‘green Red Bull’ comparisons which have hung around.

Fallows' arrival at Aston Martin from Red Bull heightened car copying speculation, but timelines on design have disproven this theory

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Aston says it realised the need to change tack independently and early in 2022. To make timelines marry, perhaps previous design boss Andrew Green ripped up his own work and coincidentally settled upon a very similar design to Red Bull before either car was unveiled. Or the team recognised the potential of the RB18 immediately in testing and used the three months prior to the Spanish GP to take heavy inspiration. Or, finally, maybe the sanctity of gardening leave is up for questioning.

It was announced in June 2021 that Fallows would be leaving Red Bull. But he wasn’t able to start his Aston tenure until 2 April 2022, just seven weeks before the Spanish round. Such a tight window would’ve made it impossible for him to fully lead the turnaround. But as he was phased out of conversations in Milton Keynes, it’s unlikely he was sat twiddling his thumbs and forgetting everything he knew. Certainly, when his Red Bull superior Newey departed Williams to join McLaren for 1997, he too was meant to spend time planting daffodils. But that didn’t stop him from using the gap between tenures to sketch a design for the forthcoming ’98 rules and meet future colleagues for dinner.

McCullough’s take on the situation is: “Last year, we started a certain way. It wasn’t the right way. We accepted that and we changed that. [Fallows and Blandin] arrived during that process and then agreed and then took hold of that and sort of ran with it. We were onto a path before they turned up. But they were able to bring another level of knowledge and experience from two of the best teams.”

Aston was more competitive following the Spanish GP update but still reached just seventh in the final standings. Only now have Fallows and Blandin turned Aston into 2023’s success story. How they’ve gone about that transformation will have naturally involved deploying an intimate knowledge of their previous employers. But them legally repeating one or two design elements isn’t worth doing unless they understand what makes an entire car tick, especially with the recent bias towards unseen underfloor aero. That’s why it’s nonsense to suggest Mercedes should simply bolt on Red Bull lookalike sidepods to solve its problems. It’s more likely such a bodge job would actually hurt performance.

Aston Martin has cleared the midfield and looks set to be a regular podium contender in 2023

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Mentally taking information with him is not to imply Fallows purloined intellectual property. The FIA investigated Aston’s processes last year and found “no wrongdoing”. The governing body was satisfied the listed components, including aerodynamic surfaces, on the AMR22 were penned independently. Critically, Red Bull did not then protest the outcome. This avoided a repeat of 2020, when Racing Point was indeed found guilty of borrowing Mercedes' rear brake duct data. The Aston similarities might therefore be attributed to a more natural process of converging around the optimum. After all, it’s entirely logical for any team to try to impersonate a car which won 17 grands prix and two sprint races in 2022. And the cost cap only encourages that trend of making safer design choices, as McCullough explains.

“We always start things with the ultimate [scenario]: ‘What would you do?’” he says. “Then we say, ‘What is the cost-effective thing to do?’ I can’t stress the cost-cap thing enough… Every session of the wind tunnel, in the simulator, all the mechanical development parts, we’re always evaluating those and seeing what’s going to be the biggest bang for buck.”

Newey’s pre-eminence has created this green rod for his own back. His strike rate has influenced Fallows and shown that it’s OK to adopt a mentality of ‘If you can’t beat them…’

To help that wallet-tightening process, using the RB18 as a reference point to discard more radical and risky concepts is wholly sensible. What’s more, the rest of the rulebook only encourages such working practices, since the Aerodynamic Testing Restrictions which limit wind tunnel hours and Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations deter teams from wasting resource designing something that isn’t a guaranteed hit.

Fallows has no shame in admitting that he has indeed taken inspiration from his Red Bull mentor of 16 years. He says: “I’m one of the fortunate people to have worked under Adrian [Newey] and seen his methods. One of the things I’ve really enjoyed with him is that he lacks any technical arrogance. He’s very open to being told things he’s suggested haven’t worked or there are better ideas out there.

“That’s something I try to bring into my own work, and I very much encourage a lot of the technical team to do. Be open-minded. That’s one of his great strengths. Hopefully I’ve sort of carried that on.”

Judging by that testimony, Newey’s pre-eminence has created this green rod for his own back. His strike rate has influenced Fallows and shown that it’s OK to adopt a mentality of ‘If you can’t beat them…’. The AMR23 does certainly look more different to the Red Bull concept than its predecessor did. But even then, the record shows that the lawmakers concluded no foul play.

While Red Bull's design has proven to be an inspiration to Aston Martin, no wrongdoing has been declared

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar

Copyright confusion: the Shadowy Arrows

Shadow founder Don Nichols’ fanciful talk of major investment and signing James Hunt for 1978 was the final straw for top staffers Jackie Oliver, Alan Rees and Tony Southgate. They quit, helped create Arrows and, just 53 days later, the team’s first car was ready for testing.

Given the rapid turnaround, unsurprisingly the new FA1 bore an uncanny resemblance to the Shadow DN9 which Southgate had drawn shortly before departing. The suspension and hub assemblies were particularly familiar. An incensed Nichols sued for copyright in a litigation battle which dragged on until the German GP, round 11 of 16.

Shadow ultimately won the case to claim £1000 for the breach and £25,000 for loss of earnings. The cars were also handed over. Arrows, meanwhile, racked up £250,000 in legal costs. But Southgate had been afforded time to design a different-enough replacement, the A1.

Inside knowledge: the blue Ferrari

Ferrari moved heaven and earth to sign John Barnard as technical director in 1987, even permitting him to be based near Guildford. That left no room for incumbent designer Gustav Brunner, who duly left and reunited with ex-ATS owner Hans-Gunther Schmid – returning to F1 to promote Rial, the alloy wheel manufacturer he’d acquired.

The fledgling team’s first effort, the ARC1, borrowed heavily from Maranello to be dubbed ‘the Blue Ferrari’ courtesy of its similar monocoque. At least the front suspension and gearbox casting were new. Plus, the Rial’s engine cover and sidepods were remodelled for the switch from a turbo V6
to a Cosworth V8. Eleven DNFs for sole driver Andrea de Cesaris meant Ferrari wasn’t too worried about the overlap before Brunner swiftly departed, having fallen out with Schmid.

Reverse engineering: the pink Mercedes

A customer engine deal and healthy rapport with donor Mercedes helped facilitate Racing Point in turning away from the Red Bull high-rake concept for the RP20. Racing Point then sent photographers trackside to snap all that made the Mercedes’ title-winning W10 so potent. Thanks to some reverse engineering, these elements created the ‘Pink Mercedes’ from ‘Tracing Point’.

While this was legal at the time, Renault successfully protested the rear brake ducts, which had been designed based on Mercedes data. These were now ‘listed parts’, meaning teams had to be solely responsible for their design. The FIA upheld the complaint, fined Racing Point €400,000 and docked 15 points, dropping the team a place to fourth in the standings.

This isn't the first time 'Team Silverstone' has been under the spotlight for car copying

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images