F1 News

Team boss Mike Krack sees Aston Martin set back

Krack concludes: 'This is why we fell back'

1 August 2023 at 15:07
Last update 1 August 2023 at 16:08
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  • Olly Darcy
  • Editor

Despite a strong start to the season, Aston Martin's results in the last few races have been disappointing. Whereas Fernando Alonso managed six podium finishes in the first half of the season, the team is now fighting to finish in the top-five at all. Team boss Mike Krack, in conversation with the likes of GPblog, said what he believes is going wrong.

"We have made developments to the car lately, and it is true what you say, we have dropped. We have dropped in the pecking order. We have lost ground a little bit to the fastest cars, but also, we have seen that other competitor cars have slipped in between, and that made us drop back slightly," Krack observes. Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton has finished ahead of the Aston Martins in the last few races, while McLaren have also made great strides. The Aston Martin team boss also sees this and, together with his team, has done a lot of analysis of the past races. "Now, we have gone through a big cycle of analysis over the last races. We’re quite confident that we’ve found what the main problems are. Now it is about making the correct changes to get them solved."

When asked what exactly were the problems that have been found by Aston Martin, Krack cannot name a specific bottleneck. Most of all, he sees that every adjustment will affect the 2023 cars, which he says are enormously complex to understand. "It is not any more than you just add downforce, downforce, downforce, downforce. Very often you introduce characteristic changes on your car, or you create other effects, and maybe this is what happened. Again, we have to now iron out these issues that we have introduced. The next question will be when? As quick as possible."