Aston Martin has 'high hopes' of performing well in final races

Aston Martin team boss Mike Krack sees an upswing in performance on the horizon for his outfit thanks to an array of high-downforce venues that should suit its AMR22.

An oil leak and an engine issue put paid to Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel's efforts at Monza recently, a pair of DNFs that interrupted four consecutive top-ten finishes for Team Silverstone.

While the Temple of Speed's low-downforce environment weighed on Aston's pace, Zandvoort's fast but higher-downforce layout was more to the AMR22's liking.

Stroll made the top-ten shootout in qualifying while Vettel was unfortunately caught out early on in the Saturday afternoon session by a patch of sand that impacted his lap just as he was on course to make the Q2 cut.

Krack believes the car's pace and behaviour at the Dutch circuit provides his team with a better glimpse into its prospects for the final rounds of the 2022 season.

"I think we have a couple of races to come where the car will be more competitive," he said, quoted by RaceFans. 

"You have seen in Zandvoort the potential to go into Q3 was there, Sebastian had obviously an issue in turn 13 that prevented him to move forward.

"At this point he was on the same lap time as Lance. So we had the potential and I think this is also encouraging for the races to come."

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Next week, Formula 1 moves on to Singapore, a track the sport last visited in 2019, having been kept away from the island country since then by the global pandemic.

And the last driver to triumph at the challenging 5.063km Marina Bay circuit was Vettel, an isolated stat that bodes well for Aston according to Krack.

"I think Singapore was always a track where he performed very well," he said. "So we have high hopes that we’ll achieve something good with him from now to the end.

"For the races to come we are quite confident, especially after our Zandvoort weekend where also in qualifying we were performing.

"We will have further updates in Singapore, and Singapore is similar in downforce level as Zandvoort and Budapest, so we are quite confident that we will be a bit better there."

Vettel hasn’t always had luck on his side in Singapore. In 2017, the then Ferrari driver collided with Scuderia teammate Kimi Raikkonen at the start, a massive mishap by the two drivers that wiped out the Italian outfit on the spot.

While Krack is confident of a performance upswing for Aston at Marina Bay, the Luxembourger is also wary of his drivers getting involved in incidents at a track that takes no prisoners when things go wrong.

The team is predictably running close to its budget cap limit, so any crash damage could prove doubly costly for Aston.

"You cannot plan to the last penny because you always have to leave a buffer in case of an accident,” explained Krack.

"So far, we are very fortunate that we have not had many but we have Singapore and Suzuka to come.

"These are always races that can be potentially expensive. We are okay but not comfortable.”

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