At the recent Spanish Grand Prix, which was won by Max Verstappen, many teams introduced their first large upgrades package of the season.
However, whilst most have caused no problems, one team has created uproar throughout the paddock.
Aston Martin’s 2022 car has been dubbed the ‘green Red Bull’ after they introduced an upgrade which made it remarkably similar to the constructors’ championship leaders.
It has caused anger amongst Red Bull, with the team’s bosses looking into their options for a thorough investigation to take place.
The frontrunning team suggested that their intellectual property has been stolen, after a senior Red Bull engineer switched to Aston Martin.
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Whilst Aston Martin officials are calling it a “coincidence”, former driver Timo Glock isn’t having any of it.
“The shape of the sidepod, the ventilation outlet, the underbody where you can see those small slots are all identical to those on the Red Bull,” he said to Sky Deutschland.
“There are far too many coincidences for me.
“Red Bull people went to that team before the concept change and now they’re the only team that had two versions of the car developing in parallel.
“In my opinion, this is not feasible from a budget cap perspective,” concluded the former Toyota and Marussia driver.
It’s not the first time Aston Martin have been caught for copying, after being dubbed as the ‘pink Mercedes’ only a few years ago whilst known as Racing Point.
Aston Martin’s technical boss Andy Green denies that the team have “received any information”.
“I can absolutely and categorically rule out that we received any information from any team for the development of this cars,” Green said.
“The allegation is completely unfounded.”
Whilst talking to the media, Green explained how the team were visited by FIA last week and that no wrongdoing was discovered.
Team principal Mike Krack discussed how the team actually had two car designs during development, and that Red Bull’s success proved to the team that they started the season with the wrong option.
“We followed two development approaches – even down to the chassis design,” he said.
“But towards the end of 2021 we realised that it is the wrong way to go.
“The fact that Red Bull then came up with something similar confirmed what we had already thought – that we went down the wrong path to start with.
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“It was encouraging to see another team perform very well with this concept,”
With Aston Martin effectively designing two cars for this season despite the budget cap, Williams team principal Jost Capito can’t understand how they’ve been able to do it.
“As a team, we would like to know what kind of investigation was done – what was looked at, how was it determined – so that we can have confidence in the FIA’s decision,” said Capito.
“If everything is correct, everything is fine and if not, then there must be consequences,”
“But the cars are obviously very, very similar,” concluded the Williams boss.