Andrew Green has rejected claims that the team can’t design a car without getting inspiration from other teams after Red Bull alleged that Aston Martin had built a virtually identical-looking car. 

With the Spanish round of the World championship typically being the round where teams bring a considerable amount of upgrades, Aston Martin brought a  completely different looking car to Barcelona after their original version had proven to be uncompetitive in the opening five races of the season.

Aston Martin’s updated car attracted the ire of Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, who has claimed that it’s no coincidence that the updated car looks similar to the team’s RB18. Furthermore, the potential transfer of Red Bull IP secrets has caused the team to launch an internal investigation, with Horner calling the potential data breach a criminal offence.

Even if the case is seemingly closed, for the time being, Green was still questioned about Horner’s comments and whether the team could design a car using their own ideas during this morning’s FIA press conference that MotorLAT attended.

“I don’t know what these accusations are about all I can say is that at no stage did we receive any data from any team. The FIA came in and did a thorough investigation, examined all the data and the history of this car; they interviewed all the people involved and concluded it was completely independent development.”

“This car was conceived in the middle of the last year as a dual-route with the launch car, and the majority of the releases were made before anyone turned up, so I think that accusation was very wide of the mark. If you look at the development of the car that is sitting out there right now, you will see that this all happened towards the end of last year before we had seen anyone else’s (car); it came as a shock and a surprise that Red Bull came out with a similar concept as well I think that just really reinforced our feeling at the time that of the two paths that we had open to us we had gone the wrong way.”

Red Bull’s technical director Pierre Wache also weighed in on the saga expressing his surprise and satisfaction at seeing a virtual copy of his team’s car in the pitlane.  

“I was surprised to see a copy; I was satisfied that a copy has been produced. I think for us, the main aspect was to be sure that it was done in the rules; FIA checked, and it looks (like it was) on our side; we now have to check if we don’t have any IP leak, that is the main asset to the team that is what we are investigating at the moment but yeah as a personal engineering aspect it was super satisfying that another team copied us, it means that our concept is not so bad.”