Controversy: Red Bull accused Aston Martin of plagiarism and threw some darts

red bull his psychological warfare began with Aston Martin. It didn’t take a race to start a controversy with the green team, where the Milton Keynes they already have several pending accounts from previous years. They taught them from the beginning because they saw that, at least at the beginning of this course, the Aston Martin AMR23 is their main rival, also aware of the huge room for improvement that the team of Silverstone at this time.

Aston Martin began to wonder. It was the car that improved the most from one year to the next in Bahrain, by a total of 2.4 seconds compared to the 2022 Bahrain GP, ​​​​while the other teams improved by a few tenths or a second at most. The green box jumped forward where it was hard to find precedents and Red Bull quickly accused the English team of plagiarism. The reason is none other than Aston Martin signing 7 engineers from Red Bull, including one of its main pillars. We are talking Dan Fallowswho is head of the aerodynamics department of red bullthe second of the guru of F1 Adrian Newley. His apprentice moved to Aston Martin and the AMR23 was his first job. So, Red Bull began its attack on Saturday.

“If you compare the two cars, the Aston Martin is the most similar to the Red Bull. There are reasons for that. It’s not just Dan Fallows who moved to Aston Martin, but other employees as well. Obviously there are they are a good memory,” said Red Bull adviser Helmut Marko, with the nice irony of getting a clear accusation of plagiarism.

And after what was seen in the race, with an Aston Martin showing strengths similar to those of the Red Bull, such as the good management of the tires in the long run and its good traction, with Fernando Alonso’s podium finish the darts. First was ‘Checo’ Pérez, who repeated the same joke several times during a press conference. “It’s great to see Red Red Bull on the podium,” he said between laughs. Verstappen followed him with more laughter, and Alonso seemed unfazed by the comment, responding with more laughter. And then another similar comment would come from Helmut Marko. “Today we have three Red Bulls on the podium, only the last one (in third position) with a different engine.”said the Austrian in front of the microphones of ‘Servus TV’.

Marko teases Aston Martin’s 2021 strategy

Red Bull always attacks what it considers its biggest rival. It was done, for example, with Mercedes in 2021, with continuous cross-statements to destabilize its rivals and a big fight in the offices. Perhaps Red Bull is afraid of the great improvement that Aston Martin can achieve with its new car, having more time in the wind tunnel and simulation set by the regulations compared to a very limited Red Bull in this respect. But there is no proof of anything they say.

Funny, because in 2021, Helmut Marko even laughed at Aston Martin’s strategy of taking some of their brains from the best teams. “F1 is still a team sport. Here you have to have very good collective unity and the right attitude at all times. That’s why we’ve been able to keep key employees with us for so long, even though Aston Martin’s several attempts to steal our people were eventually successful. But there’s no point in poaching staff and then thinking you’ve done it all.”Marko commented in 2021. Two years later, he believes headhunting is the reason for Aston Martin’s rise.

Red Bull has already lost a case against Aston Martin

Red Bull has many pending accounts with Aston Martin. The first, the controversial signing of Dan Fallows. The green team announced his signing in June 2021, but then Red Bull complained and demanded that a position that had become so important to them had to comply with the so-called ‘gardering’, the period that passes from the end of a contract of an engineer until he can start working for another team, designed so that he cannot immediately use the knowledge of one team in another. Then began a test that turned into a frog for Red Bull.

After a legal battle, both teams agreed that Dan Fallows could start working at Aston Martin from April 2022 after being an integral part of the energy drink group from its creation in 2005 to 2021. The chief engineer of the world champion car is leaving for a group that wants to be champions in the future.

Accusation of “downloading a file” in 2022

After that fight with Fallows, and angry at the signing of some of their engineers, they were upset at the final F1 2022 Spanish GP. Aston Martin started the year with the wrong car concept and they want to fix it by showing one at Barcelona 2022. There, they surprised everyone by jumping on the track with some pontoons that are very similar to the modern ones made by Red Bull, with a large cutout at the bottom. They then accused Aston Martin of an “illegal” copy. Then the paddock started talking about ‘green Red Bull’.

At the time, Red Bull showed its anger at the harsh accusations, even assuring that it could be the result of a “file download” from its factory.

“We note with interest the FIA’s statement. Although imitation is the highest form of flattery, any replica of the design will obviously have to comply with the FIA’s ‘Reverse Engineering’ rules. However, if any transfer of IP (reverse technology), would be a clear violation of the rules and a serious concern,” Red Bull said in a statement.

In this sense, it is necessary to know that the download of data in this type of company is audited and it is known at all times who consults the files and what type of file is open, for how long, as well as who downloaded them. And when

“It is important to clarify how the incredible copy of our car arrived. As it happens, copying is not prohibited, but you also have to consider that seven people were robbed from us and our former head of aerodynamics went to Aston Martin with a disproportionately high salary,” Helmut Marko commented at the time on ‘Sky Germany’.

“There is still some data that we are analyzing. We will analyze it carefully. This is not just a Dan Fallows issue. We believe that there is evidence that the data was downloaded. It is not forbidden to copy the strategy, but you can copy without documents and achieved such a detailed copy of our car?” Marko added, letting go.

On that occasion, Red Bull employees sat down to drink a special edition green can of their energy drink in ironic protest. An internal investigation was launched into the team despite the fact that the FIA ​​gave the go-ahead to the updates presented by Aston Martin. And finally, Red Bull found no evidence of what he said.

The Silverstone team has already been accused of something similar when it was Racing Point, when in the 2020 pre-season tests it put a car similar to the Mercedes from last year on the track, something which was called this ‘pink Mercedes’ . The team flattered complaints about a car that was created by studying images of the W10, without illegally receiving information.