Krack: Aston Martin has to “be on its toes” amid Haas charge

Adam Cooper
31/10/2024

Aston Martin Formula 1 team principal Mike Krack has cautioned that the Silverstone outfit has to remain on its toes and cannot take its current fifth place in the World Championship for granted.

The team has a 40-point advantage over Haas, but the US-owned team has been scoring well in recent weekends, with Kevin Magnussen finishing as high as seventh in Mexico.

With two sprint races in the last four events, potential for rain in Brazil and the possibility of a high attrition street race in Las Vegas big points could be available for midfield teams.

“It’s something where you cannot rest on your laurels anytime,” said Krack. “We’ve seen today that both Haas cars have done a good job to score a lot of points.

“And you have seen also how the battle at the front starts to get harder and harder, and this will also result in casualties, and that means, always, that the midfield will score higher points.

“And if you are not there, then there is a high chance that others are scoring high. So you need to be on your toes for that.

“So you have to be there. I mean, we have done well on the last two street circuits with points each time. But again, you cannot just base yourself on hope that it will be okay.

We need to really try and really put the best package on at all times, and also get the maximum out of it. Because what looks like a cushion – I just go back in 2022, we were quite far from Sauber, and by Abu Dhabi, we were on equal points So we cannot rest.”

Aston introduced a major update package in Austin, but not all the new elements stayed on the cars in Mexico.

“Some parts we did not fit,” said Krack. You have seen on Friday, we run a lot of sensors, special sensors. We did run different configurations on both cars. And again, in the afternoon, different configurations on both cars.

“And then overnight we decided what is the best package? And you’ve seen, for example, the front wing stayed on, but other parts we could not keep.”

Regarding future plans he said: We need to see which tracks are coming. So there is some very-high speed tracks, Qatar for example, where we might choose differently. Vegas, for example, a lot of low speed. So I think we have to decide based on that.”

After a disappointing Austin weekend for the team Lance Stroll had a solid race to 11th in Mexico, but Krack said it would be wrong to use the Canadian’s performance to suggest that the updates were working well.

“We need to analyse this carefully,” he said. “Because, yes, it’s a better result than Austin, but we also need to look carefully if it is a better pace.

Because we must not forget, today there was a lot of people taking each other out. Checo was not in his position.

“And then in the beginning of the race, we had Piastri, who were to go through the field. So I think we need to carefully analyse if we have made a step or if it was circumstantial from the race and the strategy.”

He added: “I think Mexico is a very special circuit, because it’s very biased to the low speed, plus you have the altitude.

“You have to run basically a configuration with a high downforce wing on the low speed circuit, which is okay-ish, but then you have the altitude and the cooling issues.

“So you run a very open cooling, so you have run a combination that is very unique, and that is something that you have to understand if this combination is special for Mexico, and that’s all the results that come with it are genuine, or related to the track and then how the race went.”

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