Aston Martin admits Red Bull was an 'inspiration' for its new car

Aston Martin claims it spent "seven or eight months" last year working on two parallel development projects for its new 2022 Formula One car. During that time, according to technical director Andrew Green, the controversial version of the AMR22 was designed.

The fully transformed car unveiled by Aston Martin last weekend was accused by Red Bull Racing of being a copy of its RB18, as the updates bore a striking resemblance to the defending champion's car.

Aston Martin defended itself by arguing that it was developing this concept before it had seen Red Bull's new car in February. Perhaps most striking about that statement is that the Silverstone-based team was apparently unconcerned about how Red Bull had come up with the exact same idea.

Aston Martin doesn't deny Red Bull was an 'inspiration'

Green does not deny that Red Bull's RB18 was somehow an inspiration for the renewed AMR22, but stresses that this only happened after the Milton Keynes-based team unveiled its car for 2022. So what the team saw at the unveiling of the RB18 happened to fit perfectly with Aston Martin's already existing 'alternative' design.

Moreover, he indicates that only the aerodynamic surfaces around the side pods were inspired by Red Bull, due to their resemblance to a concept that Aston Martin would have already come up with on its own last year before abandoning it.

How it was at all possible to develop two concepts in parallel Green can explain. In conversation with The Race he explains that the two projects had been running for "seven or eight months" by August. According to Green, one concept did not look like it was generating much downforce and so the team opted for the other concept, even though the other characteristics of that car seemed to fall short.

Green: "We got greedy"

"We got greedy and we chose the car that generated a lot of downforce, thinking we would improve the characteristics later," Green explains. He says that both cars were developed up to a certain level and then continued with the A car, but in the meantime that concept has therefore been pushed aside and the team has continued with the B car.

According to Green, even before the launch of its car, Aston Martin feared it had made the wrong choice and those concerns would have been amplified when Red Bull first showed up with its new design during the winter test in Spain.

How Aston Martin developed two cars at once

Green says that even then Aston Martin was planning to change its car concept early in the season. "What we did was make sure that the chassis could handle the two concepts," he states. The chassis would have been designed to carry both the old and new cooling systems without modification. "So on the chassis, there were no additional costs."

How it is possible to develop two concepts remains a big question mark, but Green assures that the costs were factored in. "We made sure that we reached the minimum amount needed to get us to race five." After that, then, the A concept would have been jettisoned. "So it is possible," Green asserts.