According to Aston Martin technical director Dan Fallows, Fernando Alonso and Max Verstappen share a common trait as F1 world champions besides being fast.
Dan Fallows explained that the Red Bull and Alpine drivers like to drive their cars at or slightly over the limit.
Alonso is set to replace Sebastian Vettel as Aston Martin’s next driver, bidding farewell to the retiring driver before replacing him next season.
Next year’s AMR23 will need to be “stable and predictable” so that Alonso can get the best out of it, according to Fallows. That’s because the double World Champion, like Verstappen, drives a Formula 1 car like a go-kart on the limit.
“I don’t know Fernando very well, so my knowledge of his driving style is based on what others have said,” Fallows told the Aston Martin website. “He has a reputation for very much driving by feel – he really likes to feel the limits of the car.
“If that’s the case, we need to make sure that the platform of the car is predictable, stable, all the things that we try to achieve with a car anyway, but it’s absolutely amplified with someone like Fernando.
“Max Verstappen is a driver very much like that. He likes to drive a car at, or slightly over, the limit all the time, so you need to make sure the car behaves properly in those conditions – at the absolute limit.
“My understanding is that Fernando will be very similar. There are drivers, like Fernando and Max, who drive these high-speed, high-downforce Formula One cars like go-karts,” he added.
“It seems absolutely extraordinary to me that they can treat a car as sophisticated and as fast as a Formula One car in the same way as they do a go-kart, but they do.
“And, if that’s how they drive, it’s up to us to give them a car that they can drive like a go-kart.”
