Horner’s sarcasm about Aston Martin bordered on arrogance

On a day of triumph for his team that saw Max Verstappen disappear into the horizon in the first Formula One race of the year and Sergio Perez scored a relatively comfortable 1-2 for Red Bull Racing, Christian Horner opted for a sarcastic stance towards the Aston Martin – with another revealing comment on the immaculate series of the Dan Fallows case.

Fallows was the right-hand man of Adrian Newey, Red Bull’s head of aerodynamics, before accepting an offer from Aston Martin to take the position of technical director for the team at Silverstone. Red Bull didn’t take the Brit’s decision too well and a dispute ensued with Aston Martin over when Fallows could offer their services to the latter.

At last year’s Spanish GP, Aston Martin unveiled a heavily redesigned car that looked strikingly identical to Red Bull, drawing public criticism from Milton Keynes and threats of legal action.

But this year’s Aston Martin AMR23 is the team’s first car designed exclusively by Fallows, and it’s been radically redesigned: it follows the philosophy Red Bull developed last year, but so do the cars of half the sports teams this year. It’s normal that the fastest car has a big influence on the designers of the other teams, it always has been.

The acknowledgment by both Fernando Alonso and Mercedes boss Toto Wolff that Aston Martin now has the second-fastest car in the sport means how much the champions dominated yesterday’s Bahrain GP is also Red Bull’s closest challenger. So for Horner, the Fallows case takes a more serious turn.

Aston Martin, said Horner, “I think it shows all teams that it can be done. So it obviously did a good job over the winter. They say that imitation is the greatest form of flattery and it’s nice to see (our) old car doing so well.”

The Brit went on to say that he has no regrets at all about losing the services of Fallows: “No, because I think we have a great team and everything has to evolve, nothing stands still. And I think we’re flattered to see the resemblance of this car to ours, so it was great to see all three on the podium.”

Finally, Horner didn’t fare too well when he spoke about Fernando Alonso’s success on Sunday (03/05): “It was great to see Fernando up there, it gives hope to the 40’s that the old man even has life in him and was racing really well. I mean he’s so competitive.”