What looked like it was to be a dream team reunion in Silverstone ended even before Adrian Newey arrives to take up his position as managing partner of the Formula One technical team. Dan Fallows has been removed from his role as technical director despite the close working relationship he had with Newey in his time at Red Bull.
Fallows began his F1 career in 2002 as a senior aerodynamicist in Milton Keynes, when the team was owned by Ford and called Jaguar Racing. However, when Ford announced they were pulling out of the ruins that was their F1 team, Dan moved to Italian chassis builder Dallara.
Red Bull acquired the team for the 2005 F1 season and immediately poached an unhappy Adrian Newey from Mclaren. Both he and Fallows joined the team for the 2006 season with Dan taking on the role of team leader in the aerodynamics department.
Newey protoge joins Aston Martin
Fallows was key to the eventual success the team was to have winning eight world titles between 2010-2013. The following year he stepped up to become Head of Aerodynamics and subsequently helped shape the team’s progress through F1’s hybrid era.
Following the purchase of the Racing Point team by Lawrence Stroll and its rebranding Aston Martin, Fallows was poached by the Silverstone team and he began his role there of technical director in April 2022.
Dan was responsible for the 2023 Aston Martin which came out of the blocks like lightening. After seven rounds of the year Fernando Alonso had claimed six podiums and sat third in the drivers standings behind the Red Bull pair in their RB19 rocket ships. Aston Martin too were riding high at this time now second behind Red Bull in the team championship.
Yet in season development saw the early success fade away over the remainder of the season, and Alonso and Aston Martin came home fourth and sixth respectively.
Jos Verstappen U-Turn over Perez
Krack on sacking of Fallows
There was no repeat of the dream start this year as Aston have toiled away on their own outside the top four since the get go in Bahrain. The F1 season came to an early end of Fallows as the team decided enough was enough and he was removed from his role to work on “other projects.”
Team boss Mike Krack now reflects in Qatar on why the decision was made. Having spent $200m on brand new site of the art facilities in Silverstone, Aston Martin have the ambition with team and driver world titles the goal of Lawrence Stroll.
Yet the slump in form this year is a setback for the Silverstone outfit who are without a single podium in 2024 and at times finding them behind the likes of Alpine, RB and Haas F1 on a race weekend.
“The only thing that matters is the result and the performance at the end,” says Krack. “And if the performance is not there, there is change. That is, I think normal in our business we are. All this is not different in any professional sport. If the performance doesn’t come then the team decides to make changes, and this is the case.”
Aston Martin upgrades failed
The exact nature of the team’s technical structure going forward is unknown with Eric Carlisle set to also join from Ferrari in the role of Chief Technical Officer. He will likely pick up some of Fallows duties and report into Adrian Newey who has committed to work full time unlike his in his recent tenure at Red Bull.
Krack explains that Aston Martin’s problem this year have been in understanding the upgrades they’ve been bringing to the car. “The surprises come when you try to upgrade the car and you do not see the performance improvement.
“That is a surprise because you want to improve it and it doesn’t improve, then you have to obviously question how you have done it and if you should have done it differently. Nobody wants to upgrade the car with stuff that doesn’t work.”
In Lusail, Ferrari were to adopt a practice used by Aston Martin most race weekends during the one hour of free practice before Sprint qualifying. The majority of the drivers in that session concentrated on the medium tyre which they are forced to use in SQ1 and SQ2 together with the soft tyre which is allowed should a driver make it through to SQ3.
F1 race director changes rules for Qatar
Ferrari mimic Aston Martin
However, Leclerc and Sainz started with the white walled hard tyre for their opening stints, completing race simulation runs before running their qualifying simulation late in the session on the red soft tyres.
For Sprint weekends the drivers are required to hand back two sets of the tyres they’ve used to Pirelli, leaving them with brand new rubber on the rest of their allocation. Aston Martin have regular this year not followed the pack, choosing to scrub in one or two sets of tyres for qualifying and in Lusail Ferrari followed suit.
Tyre degradation this weekend has been limited so far with even the soft tyre able to be pushed for several qualifying laps. F1 technical reveal Ferrari have changed the way they set up the car in Qatar sacrificing peak grip in order to achieve better purchase at the start of their medium tyre stints.
It was announced earlier this week that neither Max Verstappen nor Alex Albon will be driving FP1 at the Abu Dhabi season finale next weekend. Isak Hadjar and Luke Browning will pilot the F1 cars instead. Now Aston Martin have confirmed they too will be running a young driver in FP1 being their test driver and ex-F2 champion Felipe Drugovich.
F2 champ to drive Stroll’s car
Drugovitch has already substituted for Fernando Alonso at the Mexico City GP where he finished 18th in the session. Now it is the turn of Lance Stroll to hand his cockpit away to the young Brazilian who recently completed at test with top Indycar outfit Chip Ganassi Racing.
“I’m really excited to drive the AMR24 again, and this time at Yas Marina – a circuit that I know well from completing many testing laps there,” said Felipe.
“It will be great to see how the car feels in a completely different environment compared to Mexico, and I’m looking forward to building on what I learned during my first FP1 session earlier this year. It will be great to get a feel for the 2025 Pirelli tyres that the Formula One cars will be running next year, too,” the driver said.
Verstappen complains about RB20
Hamilton admits time has taken its toll
Lewis Hamilton became emotional during the media rounds on Thursday in Qatar. He was recalling a conversation he had with his long standing engineer Pete Bonnington when it dawned on him he had just over a week remaining with his Mercedes family of twelve years.
The British driver shocked the F1 world when he announced in 2021 he was leaving the established McLaren F1 team for new kids on the block Mercedes. However, the German back squad had a surprise for the F1 establishment as they piled vast amounts of resource into the research and development of the new V6 turbo hybrid power unit.
The total was reported at around $1b which far surpassed the amounts pumped into the programmes at Ferrari and Renault. Formula One returned to being dominated by power once again as it had done in the 1980’s and 1990’s… READ MORE
With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
Who or what is “Assent Martin” mentioned in your headline?????? You’re supposed to be a journalist, whose job it is to report and write accurately!!!
There are some words in this comment that are doing some pretty heavy lifting