The new technical structure at Aston Martin is complete after Red Bull announced the departure of Dan Fallows to its rival F1 team.
At the start of F1 Styrian GP, Aston Martin revealed its new technical structure after the promotion of Andy Green to Chief Technology Officer role and hiring of Luca Furbatto as Engineering Director, but left the technical director’s role as TBC.
While Aston Martin has not named him yet, but Red Bull confirmed Fallows as the team’s new technical director, after he agreed to leave his current role of Head of Aerodynamics. It is also to end his 15-year tenure at Red Bull, whom he joined in 2006.
Despite the announcement, Fallows will not leave Red Bull before the end of his contract with them. The team has not mentioned the extent of that, but noted that he will be part of the outfit for the 2021 F1 season, at the very least.
When asked about the extent of his joining to Aston Martin, Red Bull F1 chief Christian Horner noted that it won’t be before a year or so, that Fallows joins them. “It goes without saying that Dan will be missed as he has played an important role during his time at Red Bull Racing and I would like to thank him for his contribution towards the Team’s successes.
“We do however recognise that the chance to take on the role of Technical Director within a Formula One team is an appealing next step in his career. In turn, this move creates exciting internal progression opportunities as we look to the future and draw from the wealth of talent within the wider Team.”
On Aston Martin side, the new structure sees Green as its CTO, Furbatto as its Engineering Director, Fallows as Technical Director and Tom McCullough as Performance Director. Green will be ‘responsible for global technical strategy’.
McCullough will continue to be responsible for ‘trackside engineering and performance’ and it will extend to ‘all the performance areas within the factory, such as Aero Performance, Vehicle Performance, Performance Simulation and Performance Software’.
Furbatto, meanwhile, will take responsibility for ‘factory engineering support and projects, including Structures, Reliability and R&D’ and Fallows will lead on ‘Aerodynamics Development, overall Car Design and the short to mid-term technical strategy’.
“As Andrew Green takes on this important strategic technical role, I am pleased to outline our new structure that will add real strength in depth to our technical operations,” said Otmar Szafnauer. “In Tom, we have an experienced and talented engineer, who will continue to be responsible for trackside performance as well as the many factory-based performance functions.
“He is a strong leader, who has contributed a huge amount to the team’s success over the last eight years. With Luca Furbatto adding expertise to factory operations, focussed on the technical support areas, we have brought in another excellent people manager with great expertise in his areas of responsibility. Both men will report to Andrew Green, as will the soon to be appointed new Technical Director.
“Everybody at Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team aims to win Grands Prix and World Championships, and this new and improved structure we have created mirrors that of the most successful teams in Formula One today.”
With regards to announcement and date of joining, Szafnauer added that they are working on it and looking at long-term than short-term. “We announced yesterday the restructuring, and we were going to announce Dan in due course, but we don’t control what Red Bull do,” he said.
“I’m grateful that they announced Dan. He’s a great addition to our team. He’s a like-minded individual, he’s a high performer, he’s won world championships, he knows Seb. So we look forward to Dan joining. The start time, we’re still working on that.
“It’s a marathon, it’s not a sprint. I think the important thing is that we get the right people. You’d rather have the right people in your team as opposed to getting someone very quickly but it doesn’t work out. So the process is to identify like-minded individuals that are high performing and get them into the team. If we have to wait a little bit, that’s the process,” summed up Szafnauer,
Here’s Aston Martin on their past hiring