Red Bull to drop internal investigations into Aston Martin’s AMR21

Red Bull will be moving on from the so-called ‘Copygate’ situation with Aston Martin, after conducting internal investigations at Milton Keynes.

Red Bull won’t be pursuing any escalation of the situation regarding Aston Martin’s AMR22, after the Silverstone-based team showed up with a ‘B-spec’ version of their car that bore a striking similarity to Red Bull’s own RB18.

While Aston Martin began the season with a unique design, the team showed up for the Spanish Grand Prix with a very different-looking car that appeared to take quite a lot of inspiration from the Red Bull machine.

Given that Aston Martin have signed several team personnel from Red Bull in recent months, including former Head of Aerodynamics Dan Fallows, eyebrows were raised in light of the design change. Fallows’ signing as Aston Martin’s new Technical Director was fought in court by Red Bull, with both parties eventually agreeing to a deal that allowed Fallows to start work at Aston Martin in April.

There were murmurings of discontent from Red Bull about the Aston Martin design during the Spanish weekend, with a statement saying that “while imitation is the greatest form of flattery, any replication of design would obviously need to comply with the FIA’s rules around ‘reverse engineering’.

“However, should any transfer of IP (intellectual property) have taken place that would clearly be a breach of regulations and would be a serious concern.”

While the FIA cleared Aston Martin of having obeyed all the regulations regarding how they came about their design, essentially being able to show the proof of their concept dating back to late 2021, Red Bull confirmed they would carry out internal investigations to ensure that no data had left their facilities.

Those internal investigations appear to now be closed, with Helmut Marko confirming that nothing is provable.

“The current state of affairs is that we can’t prove anything specifically,” Marko is quoted by RTL…