F1: Aston Martin still poaching talent from all F1 teams

With team owner Lawrence Stroll’s deep pockets, the Aston Martin team has been poaching the best talent it could get from other teams as it tries to make a winning formula.

Aston Martin Formula 1 technical director Dan Fallows, who himself was poached from Red Bull, says that the team has already benefitted from the mix of new recruits and established staff members.

“We’re keen to learn from what other people do well,” said Fallows when asked by Motorsport.com about the recruitment drive.

“And it’s something I’ve always found, when you recruit people there is always something you can learn that other teams are doing, but also we’ve been fortunate enough to recruit some very talented and experienced people who have their own ideas about what makes a car go fast.

“The nice thing is they’ve come into this environment very open-minded, very willing to forge their own way of doing things using that experience, that collective experience, to go our own way.”

“There’s a number of reasons why Red Bull are good,” he said. “They’ve managed, over a period of years, to iron out issues in every aspect of the team, whether that be the race team, the manufacturing facilities, the design office, and a lot of building that kind of success is making sure there are no areas where you have substantial weaknesses.

“In many ways, I’m very proud that I was part of that on the engineering side. They’re an incredibly strong team, and I think that I do have that experience of what it means to win races and win championships.

“I think the key message is that you have to make sure that in every aspect of what you’re doing there are no holes, no things that you’re doing that can be compromising your performance as you go along.”

“The important thing for us is to make sure we don’t just replicate what our competitors do. We don’t believe that is going to help us overtake the likes of Red Bull, Mercedes and Ferrari.

“So we have to develop our own way of doing things. That does take time, but we’ve got a hugely ambitious group of people, and one of the things about seeing the new factory come together is it demonstrates this momentum, this wish to kind of accelerate the process of moving up the grid and getting into a winning situation.

“And I think that’s what’s really going to help us get there, this passion, this motivation and this belief we will get there eventually.”