Mike Krak: We don’t make excuses

Aston Martin has three weeks to try to increase the car’s speed at least somewhat for the next stage of the championship. This season is frankly not successful for the team, although it occupies fifth place in the constructors’ championship and is ahead of the other five teams, but loses too much to the first four.

Recently, only Fernando Alonso has been able to earn points, who manages to squeeze more out of the car than he can deliver, but the real indicator of the speed of the AMR24 can be considered the results of Lance Stroll, and the last time he the top ten was over two months ago.

However, Aston Martin F1 chief Mike Krak said he and his subordinates do not make excuses, do not give up, keep working and believe the team can still make improvements.

Mike Krak: “We have to remain self-critical and there is nothing worse than calling our team ‘the best of the rest’. We have no intention of giving up and I believe that in the future, if we introduce some technical innovations, we can solve the problems that are hindering us now.”

Time will tell whether the current difficulties will be overcome in the remaining six races of the season, but we must admit that the updates presented by the team in the previous stages often did not produce the effect that the engineers expected.

There are sometimes suggestions that Aston Martin’s slowdown is partly due to the Mercedes wind tunnel, which it continues to use until a new one, its own, is commissioned, the construction of which has been completed but which continues to face the process of adjustment and calibration.

But Krak rejects this version: “This would be too simple an explanation. There is another team using the same wind tunnel, so that is no excuse.”

We are of course talking about Mercedes, whose drivers not only consistently earn points, especially in the second half of the year, but also achieved three victories. It was at this time that there was a marked decline in Aston Martin’s results.

“At the beginning of the season, during the very first races, we were about on par with Mercedes,” said Krak. “Therefore, it is quite possible to make significant progress if the car is stable and the behavior is more or less satisfactory for the drivers.”

When Adrian Newey joins Aston Martin in the future, which will happen next year, there is of course hope that the team will be able to gradually improve the situation, but for now his job is to achieve at least some success in the future. the last part of the season, then the growth of results.

After 18 stages, she has 86 points, which is almost four times less than Mercedes, which occupies 4th place in the team rankings, and exactly six times less than McLaren, which leads the constructors’ championship.