Mike Krack: “We’ll work hard; we saw last year that we can close the gap to the cars ahead”

Mike Krack, Aston Martin’s director, has expressed immense satisfaction with the performance of their car in the first two races of the season, during which they secured two podium finishes thanks to their impressive pace and speed on track, without being aided by external factors. Despite their strong start to the season, Krack remains cautious and prefers to wait and see how the season unfolds before drawing conclusions about their chances this year.

Aston Martin has been a standout team so far, demonstrating impressive on-track performance and putting Fernando Alonso on the podium twice. This was entirely unexpected at the beginning of the season but, thanks to their remarkable speed, it is quickly becoming a regular occurrence. Furthermore, both results were achieved based on race pace alone, not due to safety cars or race events that could have influenced the outcome – just the car’s sheer competitiveness, which was better in race stints than in qualifying.

While the first race of the season was quite brilliant, the second was no less so, taking place on a completely different track with different characteristics, yet producing the same outcome. This is encouraging news for Krack, although not definitive. “We have two sets of data from completely different tracks, and on both, we were competitive, but there are more to come. We don’t want to underestimate them; it could be that one of our rivals has an issue they’re not aware of or that could change the order, so we need to wait and see,” he commented in statements collected by Formula 1’s official website.

One of the main risks of such a remarkably positive start to the year, Alonso’s best since 2012, is the belief that they will automatically be fast on all tracks. Krack curbs this enthusiasm and remains cautious about what’s to come. “The benchmark is always the fastest car. In terms of identifying weaknesses and areas for improvement, you look at your own car over the weekend and see how it goes. There’s no point in taking for granted that you have a certain advantage over them; you need to look at your own car and assess where it’s weak and move forward from there,” he explained.

Aston Martin had a starkly different start to the season compared to last year when they began in the last positions, far behind their rivals and with a lot of work to do on the car. This year, the trend isn’t as pronounced, but if it continues, they could find themselves consistently near the top. “It’s a good question whether Red Bull can be caught. The development race is now underway; we’re competing with people who have different capabilities in terms of structure and experience in achieving success. We need to be careful about making too many predictions in that regard. We can maintain those gaps, but can we close in and narrow them? We’ll work hard; we saw last year that we can close the gap to the cars ahead, but just because we did it last year doesn’t mean we’ll do it this year,” Krack concluded.