Aston Martin has had a remarkable season. The Silverstone-based team regularly finished on the podium at the beginning of the season, but as the season progressed, the team dropped back more and more. Dan Fallows, Aston Martin's technical director, talks to the New York Times about the team's remarkable season.

It was a shock to almost every F1 fan: not Ferrari or Mercedes, but Aston Martin was the best team after Red Bull Racing at the start of the season. With no fewer than six podiums from Fernando Alonso in the first half of the season, the team might have seemed on its way to a particularly successful season. However, that illusion was soon over, as Mercedes and Ferrari began to perform better, and McLaren also made huge strides in development.

Fallows saw setback Aston Martin already coming

So Fallows says he wanted to wait and see it all out before becoming too positive: "It was extraordinary to see that we were so competitive, but we were under no illusion that we were a team where it was obvious that we would finish second in the championship. We knew it would be very difficult to stay in that spot in the longer term."

The technical director also says they were surprised at Aston Martin that the other teams were not so quick off the mark at the start. "By developing they came back to their, let's say, natural position. That's something we couldn't influence with what we had in house. We need to work on that if we want to become a stronger team in the future."