Cowell restores order and Fallows is responsible for failures

The Aston Martin F1 team has announced that Dan Fallows has been dismissed from his position as technical director, news that surprised virtually no one in Formula 1.

Firstly, Adrian Newey will join the team in March next year and take on the new role of Managing Technical Partner, and it appears that some reforms in this area have already begun. By the way, Fallows once worked under him at Red Bull Racing, heading the aerodynamics department.

Secondly, it is Fallows who bears a significant share of the responsibility for the failed season: if in 2023, after 21 stages of the championship, the team had 273 points, now only 86, although it is still in 5th place in the Constructors’ Championship.

“This is our most difficult season because we are not living up to our own expectations,” team manager Mike Krak recently admitted. “We set ourselves the task of creating a car that could be continuously upgraded to compete with the top four teams, but these ambitious plans could not be realized.

We must admit this honestly, accept the current situation, learn as much as we can, realize what mistakes have been made and find ways to move forward.”

Apparently one of these methods was the removal of Fallows from his post – it was emphasized that he was not being fired, but would remain at Aston Martin, although it was not stated in what capacity.

He started his career in the early 2000s with Jaguar’s Formula 1 factory project, which later evolved into the Red Bull Racing team. Fellows has been instrumental in her numerous championship victories and has been with Aston Martin since April 2022.

It should be emphasized that Fellows, who turns 51 tomorrow, is a highly qualified professional, and at Red Bull he is head of the aerodynamics department. Last year, when Fernando Alonso was able to fight for podium places with the AMR23 car from the very beginning of the championship and finish in the top three eight times during the season, it was truly impressive. Many attributed the team’s astonishing progress to Fallows; after all, he was Newey’s closest colleague for many years.

But this season has mainly brought disappointment to Aston Martin; it has clearly lost ground, although there are also positive changes, but they are related to something else: the team’s new base was completed, and at the end of the year the newest and ultra-modern one. -modern simulator and wind tunnel should be operational.

It became clear that last year’s successes were partly due to the fact that teams such as Mercedes, McLaren and even Ferrari did not immediately gain momentum and did not perform very consistently. This season the picture has changed, the top teams have confirmed their status, while Aston Martin is still too early to claim it.

The problem is that the technical innovations that Aston Martin specialists developed and implemented worked ineffectively while rivals made progress, and Dan Fallows as technical director should be held responsible for the fact that Alonso and Lance Stroll have been able to earn fewer and fewer points. recently.

His resignation from the position of technical director comes amid other significant changes in Aston Martin’s engineering department. In October, Andy Cowell, a former Mercedes chief engineer with an excellent reputation, took over as CEO and will work with Adrian Newey to transform the team’s engineering corps. It is unclear what role Fallows could play in the new structure.

The tone of today’s Aston Martin press release is not exactly cordial, although Fallows was formally thanked for his “contribution to the development of the team.” This is just the first step for Cowell, who will bring order to the ranks of the engineering department in his own way. Only time will tell what the next steps will be.