"It’s certainly been a year of learning": Aston Martin's Adrian Newey understudy looks back at a tough 2023 F1 season 

Aston Martin F1 Technical Director Dan Fallows mentioned that the 2023 season has been a year of learning after their mid-season upgrades failed to materialize into performance and pegged them into the midfield.

Fallows, who was previously at Red Bull under the tutelage of Adrian Newey, joined the team last season with the AMR23 being the first car developed under his leadership. The Silverstone-based outfit started the season very strongly with a raft of podium finishes courtesy of Fernando Alonso.

However, a mid-season upgrade in Canada set them back in terms of performance as they went from the second-fastest on the grid to fifth-fastest. As per RaceFans, Aston Martin's Technical Director admitted their mistake and hoped to learn from it. He said:

“We did have a very good start to the season, and we’ve obviously been disappointed with the way it’s panned out in recent races, but this experience has enabled us to learn some valuable lessons which we’re trying to take into next year – we can see where we went wrong in terms of upsetting the car balance,”

“We’ve understood why that’s hurt our overall performance. Now, it’s a question of making sure that we don’t make the same mistakes again; it’s certainly been a year of learning.”

Aston Martin F1 director provides an update on the upgrades ahead of the US GP

Dan Fallows stated that the team will bring some new upgrades to the COTA track this weekend ahead of the 2023 F1 US GP.

However, he claimed that it was a pity that the weekend would have Sprints as well. He said:

“We have some updates coming into the weekend, and we’re quite interested to see how they work. In some ways its a shame that it’s a sprint weekend because we’d like to have more time to dial in those updates and see how the cars will perform.

“It will be a big challenge to gain that understanding as early as possible. We’re looking forward to seeing how these upgrades perform and, hopefully, it’s a track where we should be reasonably competitive if we can get everything right.”

It will be fascinating to see how Aston Martin will approach the remaining races in the season after their strong start to 2023, they are certainly going to finish P5 in the Constructor's Championship with a faster McLaren just a couple of points behind them.