Aston Martin Aramco Formula One team’s challenger for the 2024 season fittingly titled AMR24 has the clear intention of building on the strengths of its predecessor. The success of the AMR23 was a result of the Aston Martin team building on what they had learnt in 2022. Therefore, with the team’s Technical Director Dan Fallows recently telling media ‘it’s essentially a strong evolution of last year’s car’ confidence must surely be high for another impressive year ahead.
The hope is that Aston Martin has been able to apply the lessons learnt from the previous season and seeing how 2023 provided them with their most successful season in F1 yet – which included eight podiums – if they have managed to do so then further successes may follow this year.
Aston Martin’s Technical Director, Dan Fallows, spoke to media in the day prior to the AMR24 being revealed to the world. He explained that a majority of the parts have changed from its predecessor but “it is really still essentially a strong evolution of last year’s car.”
Despite their early success in the 2023 season, the team would finish the year P5 in the constructors’ Championship after having to recover from taking the AMR23 in a direction with upgrades midseason which didn’t come to fruition. As a result of this, the team avoided making major upgrades as the season drew to a close. Fallows remarked on this and also explained how the lack of development late on last year may actually benefit his team in 2024.
“I think it’s no secret that we took a pragmatic approach to the end of last season. We wanted to make sure that we used every opportunity to really learn the lessons that we needed to learn on AMR23,” Fallows explained. “We had effectively a kind of glorified test session almost in some of the races but it was important for us to do that. We recognised that we needed to do something that was going to teach us lessons for 2024 and we did.
“And I think to come out of that having achieved good performances towards the end of the season, culminating in a podium in Brazil and [fifth] place [in the Constructors’], which was a great result for us, and then to come out of that and then to obviously have that momentum going into this year, I think that was the really key bit for us. Having been through that process and continuing that momentum into ’24, I think gives us a lot of confidence going into this season.”
A visit to the team’s official website shows early on the confidence they have in their new chassis. It is described as ‘a lighter, more aerodynamically efficient race car than last year.’ Fallows also highlighted the chassis in his recent comments whilst also pointing out that the nose, front wing, front suspension and rear suspension are all new for 2024.
“We want to compete in the development race this season and this car is designed to do just that,” he stated.
It would take a very ambitious Formula One fan to not expect that Red Bull Racing will be the team to beat yet again. Fallows, having been a former Red Bull Racing employee, is well positioned to be able to predict whether his team can match the current frontrunners of the F1 grid.
“We talk about Red Bull because obviously they are the benchmark in terms of performance,” replied Fallows. “But you know really for us, whoever’s the fastest car is the focus for us and that’s what we’re looking at. I think rather than looking at 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 and that’s really what we’re focused on is making a car that’s usable that’s good for the drivers and that’s what we’ve really been trying to sort of focus on and 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.”
If the AMR24 is the all-rounder which the team clearly hope it is then there is every chance that the team may be able to consistently run at the front in contention for podiums once again and who knows – maybe even a race win. Either way, the team look set to not repeat the errors of 2023 and instead have produced a car which in their words “provides the ideal platform for in-season development and a sustained season-long challenge.”
