Aston Martin have been told by former F1 driver Johnny Herbert that they need to try and find a ‘more creative brain than Adrian Newey,’ in a bid to reel in Red Bull at the front of the pack.
Red Bull have started this F1 season in superb form, with them winning all three of the first three races of the year, and it already looks as though it is going to take some effort from those behind them to try and catch up this campaign.
Aston Martin, Mercedes, and Ferrari are the teams in with the best chance of doing that, meanwhile, and it is arguably Aston who have shown they are closest of all, with Fernando Alonso taking three podiums this year.
The Silverstone-based team have made quite an incredible leap from where they were at the end of 2022 but making that last jump to becoming regular race winners could be the hardest task of all, and Herbert believes that the team will need to find someone with an incredible designers’ mind to take on the might of Adrian Newey and his group of engineers.
Herbert, who recently launched new F1 podcast Lift The Lid alongside Billy Monger, said:
“Can they win constant races and become a threat to Red Bull in the near future? They can because obviously, the investment’s going in from Lawrence Stroll who is behind it and is wanting it to be a challenger.
“But it’s not just about spending the money and I would imagine Lawrence is aware of that. It’s how you fit the right ingredients into the whole team to use those facilities that they’re building at the present time.
“Dan Fallows is a good one for them to be able to get on board but the question is how do you beat Adrian Newey and his team? Because I think what Adrian installs in his team is his mindset. And I think he makes them turn into the creative brain that he is, so you’ve got to try and beat that.
“So you can take people from Red Bull, which Dan is an example of, but can Dan now have the same visions as what Adrian has?
“There will be someone, if it’s Dan I don’t know, but there will be someone somewhere who will have this more creative brain than Adrian – they’re out there somewhere. You’ve just got to find them. And whoever finds them first is obviously going to benefit from that!
“But if you look at what’s happened since the change from Racing Point to where they are today in a very short space of time they have arguably the second-best car. So the progress has been very big. But of course, one big leap is great. It’s the next big leap to actually become the best which is the hardest task.”
A hard task indeed and so is trying to find someone with the genius to out-think Adrian Newey.
If Aston, or anyone else, can find that person, though, they could assert themselves as the team to beat in the years ahead.
Billy Monger and Johnny Herbert have recently launched the Lift The Lid podcast to give the inside track on being a racing driver. Subscribe to the Lift The Lid podcast here via your favourite podcast platform.
