Aston Martin Director Believes Team Has Hit "Aggressive Targets" For 2023 F1 Season
Aston Martin technical director Dan Fallows has spoken about the AMR23 after the Bahrain GP Free Practice 1 session.
The British team have shown significant improvements from 2022 with Fernando Alonso and reserve driver Felipe Drugovich putting in some good times during pre-season testing last week.
The team announced yesterday that Canadian driver Lance Stroll will be back competing in the Bahrain Grand Prix this weekend, after suffering from a broken wrist from a bicycle accident during his winter training.
Stroll's AMR23 suffered from an ignition issue during the first practice session reducing his time in the car even further ahead of Sunday. Luckily, the team were able to fix this fairly quickly allowing him back on the track to get some laps under his belt.
Both Alonso and Stroll were putting in slower times than pre-season testing today, indicating that the team were running further tests on the cars.
Fallows explained during the press conference:
"We are pleased with our goal. We targeted making a big step up on last year’s car so in terms of performance relative to that, we’re definitely happy that we have made a step towards that.
“We set aggressive targets for ourselves and we believe we’ve largely hit those. We came out of testing, believing that we do have a car that we could work with. Where we sit relative to other people, we simply don’t know.”
The former Red Bull head of aerodynamics continued:
“I’ve been fortunate enough to have had relatively recent experience of a top team and how it operates.
"It’s sometimes very difficult for the midfield teams to compete on every level that the top teams have, particularly in things like facilities and tools.
“So it is incredibly important to try to focus on the strengths that you have. In the case of Aston Martin, I think some people have been there for quite a long time but the team has developed. That is a big strength of ours. We have an incredibly talented, passionate team around us.
“I think that other teams showed over the previous years that they can punch above their weight and so we need to lean on that.”