F1 News: Aston Martin Don't Regret Austin GP Risks Despite Alonso's DNF

Bringing in upgrades for a Sprint weekend is always a high risk.

Aston Martin Team Principal Mike Krack revealed that it has always been risky for the team to bring in new upgrades to a Sprint weekend like the US GP. However, despite the lesson learned the hard way, he hinted that it is still doable despite the high-risk factor involved. 

All Aston Martin had in hand to test the new floor, the updated bodywork and find the right setup in Austin was just one hour of practice. The team was optimistic about the mountainous task ahead of them but soon, their plans fell apart. 

After just five laps of the Sprint race, Lance Stroll retired due to a brake issue. That meant Fernando Alonso had to do all the work to ensure he gave the right feedback to have the car set up correctly.

With a minimal amount of homework done in the Sprint episode, the team witnessed another setback when both drivers failed to make it past Q1, with Alonso qualifying 17th while Stroll qualified 19th.

The AMR team then took a radical decision to start both drivers from the pit lane by choosing to make set-up changes and that meant breaking the parc ferme rules. Alonso's F1 car was set back to its Qatar spec while Stroll experimented with the new floor and the other major changes.

Eventually, the latter finished seventh in the Grand Prix but, Alonso was forced to retire after the unforgiving bumps at the Circuit of the Americas (COTA) shattered his car's floor. The weekend ended with Aston Martin taking down a lot of notes but, Krack said they took the risk knowingly so there's nothing much left to complain. He revealed:

“You have to accept that after three days of really hard work, there are a couple of smiling faces in the garage.

"But you have also to see what a missed opportunity it might have been.

"And this is the reality. So, fact is that on Friday, we should have done our homework, we didn’t do it. And we had the consequences all over the weekend.

"Now, there is always the rule, don’t bring upgrades to the Sprint weekend.

"When you take this decision to do it, nevertheless, you know what the risk is, and then you cannot complain when it happens. It’s another lesson learned.”

Rules Can Be Broken Twice

Mike Krack hinted that the team would take the risk again if needed. When asked if he would have pushed the new upgrades to a regular F1 weekend, he said:

“I think you need to differentiate, you cannot just say no.

"You need to be aware of the risk. And we lost the Friday due to preparation, we were not well enough prepared, we overheated the front corners, and we lost the session.

"When you have only one hour when we came here, we said we have to be 100% in this one session. If we have one glitch, you don’t have the data that you want to have.

"And we had a glitch, and we didn’t have the data.

"So I think it’s manageable if you have no issues, to bring upgrades into a Sprint. And other teams are doing it. It’s doable, but the risk is higher.”

Sadly though, the team lost fourth place in the Constructors' Championship to McLaren despite bagging six points. The Papaya team now remains ahead by six points.