Dan Fallows leaving his position as the Aston Martin Formula 1 team’s technical director is down to the team’s performance and not Adrian Newey’s arrival, according to performance director Tom McCullough.
Aston Martin announced Fallows will step down last week, with a statement saying he would be remaining with the wider group. The former Red Bull head of aerodynamics has been with the team since 2022, but McCullough says the fact that Newey will make the same switch next year is not the catalyst for Fallows’ departure.
“No, I think ultimately this decision has been made by the team prior to that,” McCullough said. “The performance of the team this year hasn’t been at the level that we’ve all been wanting it to be at. So we haven’t quite delivered there, and that’s basically been the decision made by the team.
“I sat next to Dan for the last two or three years, since he’s been here, working closely with him. He had a really big impact on the development of the ’22 car, the ’23 car — he has brought a lot to the team. So from that side, it’s been good fun working with him, but ultimately, during ’24 we haven’t delivered on track to the level that we were expecting to and wanted to. The development of these cars has been hard; ultimately it’s a performance-based industry, and the team’s made the decision to make some changes.”
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McCullough believes Aston Martin has the existing personnel and structure to pick up Fallows’ responsibilities without having to hire an external replacement.
“[Executive director] Bob Bell joined early in the year. Overall, Bob’s been overseeing technical functions — I report to Bob, as Dan did, as Luca [Furbatto, engineering director] does. We have strength in depth within the team, so those roles are being shared. We have Eric [Blandin,] on the aero side, taking on quite a lot of the roles at this stage. But ultimately, Bob’s the one responsible.”