Aston Martin F1 will persist with its Imola upgrades despite challenges, with team principal Mike Krack emphasizing their commitment to aggressive development.
Technical director Dan Fallows praised the “aggressive” evolution of Fernando Alonso’s and Lance Stroll’s cars. Despite Stroll scoring two points, Alonso’s qualifying and race performances were disappointing, finishing a disastrous 19th.
“We have homework to do and a lot of work ahead,” admits Krack.
“Dan mentioned an aggressive evolution, and it’s necessary if we want to catch up with the best. We need to take risks. We won’t backtrack; we need to understand how to make these parts work.”
“This year, the margins are certainly shrinking, and being on the wrong side of these small margins makes it difficult because the competition is so close.”
Krack dismisses criticism suggesting Aston Martin has been in steady decline since the brilliant start to the 2023 season, where Alonso secured an impressive series of podiums.
“In Shanghai, we were third on the grid. So, it wasn’t that long ago.”
He also asserts that Aston Martin is fundamentally keeping pace with the development rate of its main competitors.
Aston Martin F1 Maintains Commitment to Imola Upgrades Despite Hurdles
“Other teams had the same list of improvements at Imola. However, we are dissatisfied with two specific points, which we will keep to ourselves,” says Krack.
“Expectations are very high compared to last year. We try to be objective, but it’s challenging. With eight podiums, the bar is set very high.”
“But we need to understand how those podiums were achieved. Some teams hadn’t done their homework while we had, putting us in a position we weren’t prepared for as a team. We need to be realistic.”
“We must continue pushing and bringing more upgrades.”
Krack dismissed the notion that the “aggressive” Imola upgrade was such a failure that Aston Martin should reverse it to avoid a development deadlock.
“No, the update is definitely a step forward,” insists Krack. “There’s no need to remove it.”
“At Imola, starting from where we did was challenging. But we still came away with two points, which I think is a decent result, showing that the car is still capable.”
“But we also saw that it’s difficult to drive. We had a few off-track excursions this weekend. Saturday’s incident impacted us the most, as it put us on the back foot from that moment.”
“We wanted to learn more, which is why we chose to start from the pit lane with Fernando and made changes to the car to see if we could make things easier. We aimed to do better than we did, but it was also somewhat compromised by Saturday’s events.”
Aston Martin Unwavering on Imola Upgrades Aston Martin Unwavering on Imola Upgrades
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