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Aston Martin's former team principal Otmar Szafnauer has given his two cents about the new upgrades his former team brought to the Spanish GP. Szafnauer, who worked in the British team until last year, naturally saw certain developmental phases of this year's Aston Martin car. Hence, it is curious to see his surprise at how closely the AMR22 resembles the RB18.
The Alpine team principal said that it would behoove one to remember that the Silverstone-based team had poached as many as 14 of Red Bull's employees last winter. Speaking to AS, he said:
“It makes no sense to copy the last [racing stable], you copy the front one. But you have to remember that Aston Martin took fourteen people from Red Bull the for aerodynamics department and so on.”
He continued to explain:
“Guess what they’re going to do?.... I don’t know if this is copy based on photos, but I think this must have started before the Red Bull was shown to the public in February. This goes back to before there were pictures. There is controversy.”
Red Bull was expectedly furious with such a development and Helmut Marko even revealed that there was evidence of some data having been downloaded from Red Bull. Speaking to the media, he said:
“It must now be clarified how this unbelievable copy came about. Copying is not forbidden. But you also have to take into account that seven people were poached from us and that our chief aerodynamicist [Dan Fallows] was drawn to Aston Martin with a disproportionately high fee.”
He further stated:
“There are still some facts that we are looking into. We will look into it in detail. It’s not just Dan Fallows. There is evidence that data was downloaded. Is it possible to copy without documentation and then manage such a detailed copy of our car?”
Only time will tell what Red Bull's investigation will uncover.
Aston Martin's resemblance left Horner worried about IP transfer
Christian Horner is worried that the personnel that moved to Aston Martin over the winter took more than what was in their heads with them, i.e. Red Bull's IP.
Speaking on the BBC podcast, the Briton said:
“A few people have moved over the winter period, and what you can’t control is what they take in their heads. But what would be of grave concern to us would be if any IP had in any way changed hands. That is where we rely on the FIA to do their job. They have all the access and we will be relying on them heavily to ensure that no Red Bull IP has found its way into that car.”
Despite its new upgrades, Aston Martin had an underwhelming start to the weekend as both Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll were eliminated in Q1. Looking at the British team's performance, Red Bull could drop this altogether as there might not be any overall gain for either party.
