Verdona: an aerodynamic car

The similarity of the “verdona” to the RB18 is not surprising because the technical director, Dan Fallows, came from the Milton Keynes team, where he was the aerodynamic leader, so the concepts he brought are those of Adrian Newey’s car. The double bottom has disappeared thanks to the painstaking work of Luca Furbatto who transformed the AMR22 into a car with sloping bellies after the horizontal radiators were put back upright and tilted forward. It is a real revolution.Dan Fallows’ footprint is clear: the Aston Martin AMR22 has become a copy of the Red Bull RB18. An easy irony could be made by recalling that the Silverstone team had drawn on many dislikes when, still with the Racing Point colors, they lined up in 2020 what was called the pink Mercedes, a true copy of Brackley’s W10 world champion, but in this case the resemblance should not come as a surprise, since Fallows was Milton Keynes’ aerodynamic leader until he was “snatched” by Lawrence Stroll. Dan brought the knowledge of the Red Bull world and Luca Furbatto put in the ability to know how to package mechanically very interesting single-seaters (his is the Alfa Romeo C42 that is doing well with Valtteri Bottas)). The result we see in Barcelona is that the AMR22 has given up on the aerodynamic concept of the double bottom, going in the direction taken by Adrian Newey.
Giorgio Piola’s image shows us a belly that resembles (we cannot go further because the RB18 is much more extreme in aerodynamic solutions) to Red Bull, because the “verdona” had limits caused by the design of the frame which obviously is not been changed.
The side in the first portion has a flare that slopes downwards to move the flow towards the bottom. With the radiators that were mounted in a more traditional position (vertical and tilted forward, rather than horizontal and very raised from the bottom) it was necessary to overhaul the entire cooling system: there are no longer the large gills above the belly, but vents have been opened on the sides of the Halo attack that extend upwards, just as we observed on the Red Bull.Even the bottom and the extractor refer to the concepts of Milton Keynes: the Aston Martin mechanics were subjected to a very intense work cycle to complete two new versions of the AMR22 at the last minute, while there were those who claimed that it would be only a new car was deployed.