F1 News: Aston Martin Chief Reveals Fernando Alonso Success Led Team Astray

Aston Martin's boss has a 'reality check', revealing that the team has been slow in learning the car.

Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack made a few surprising revelations about the development of their F1 car AMR23. The team did well at the beginning of the 2023 season but something caused them to fall back. Is the team staring at failed strategies or is it the other teams that have upped their pace? 

Currently, Aston Martin sits in the third position in the 2023 Constructors' Championship at 196 points- 51 points behind Mercedes. During the initial races of the season, Aston Martin set great expectations in terms of performance with Fernando Alonso bringing home podium finishes on six occasions. But in the recent past, the glory seems to be fading and Krack goes on to explain the not-so-complex reason behind it. 

In an interview on the Aston Martin website, Krack explains that it wasn't the team's failures that caused them to fall back. In fact, there were no failures. It is just that the other teams managed to get in front. He said:

“We've lost small amounts compared to our competitors and as an engineer, that makes you disappointed, but it's the qualifying and finishing positions that give the perception that we've dropped back massively when in reality we haven't.

"Our competitors have just improved more than us and jumped into that gap between us and Red Bull.”

Unfortunately, Krack also revealed that upgrades on the AMR23 had significant side effects. The complexity was such that it only came to light after a few races had passed by. He explained:

“We're constantly pushing the development, and these cars are so complex that any change will impact other areas of the car – there are side effects. Very few changes you make to the car work in isolation.

"We made a change earlier in the season and didn't anticipate it having some of the side effects that it did. It wasn't until after several races at different types of circuits that we realised how it was influencing the car.

"The upgrades we have put on the car have worked, and the numbers are where they should be – but I think the results over the last few races are representative of where we are.”

He stated further that the car's drawbacks were well masked in the Monaco GP and Canadian GP- all thanks to Alonso for finishing in P2 in both races. However, since Krack's team was still taking time to know the car, the ramped-up expectations made from both races dropped quite badly when they had a reality check after the Hungarian GP that saw both drivers finish ninth and tenth. Krack explains what he went through when the graph displayed a downward trend:

“Events like Monaco and Canada were outliers – they masked the weaknesses – and because we did well in those events, expectations ramped up only for the disappointment to be bigger at Barcelona, Austria, Silverstone and Budapest when we couldn't achieve such top results.

“Budapest was a reality check.

"We thought that we would be strong there and we weren't, but it made us take a zoomed-out view and look not at Hungary in isolation but see Budapest and how it relates to Silverstone, how it relates to Barcelona and so on. It's all important learning.

"From the start of the season, I've been saying that these events are very dynamic, and with an upgrade it takes a couple of races to understand what the AMR23 is doing. After lots of analysis in the aftermath of Budapest we understand the changes we need to make.

"We've improved less than the others so now it's up to us to improve more than them.”