Aston Martin team boss Mike Krack doesn't believe that the British outfit's subdued result in Barcelona last weekend was an indication of a reshuffle of the competitive order in F1 behind Red Bull.
For the first time this season, Aston Martin finished a race outside of the top four, with Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso classified respectively P6 and P8 in Spain.
Alonso reckoned that the Circuit de Catalunya's configuration perhaps didn't cater to the qualities of Aston's AMR23, while the Spaniard also pointed to rival teams' upgrades – and especially Mercedes – as a factor that impacted the Silverstone-based outfit's result.
"The upgrades from other people, I think maybe they didn't show their full potential in Monaco and Miami – street circuits," said Alonso who urged his team to step up its development pace.
"So here, we saw today that maybe they are a little bit stronger."
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Aston Martin will travel to Canada next week with several updates in its crates according to Krack.
"He is right to ask us and push us for that," said Krack, responding to Alonso's comment. "There will be something coming in Canada. It will be a step."
Mercedes' new-spec W14 has clearly benefitted from its recent revisions, while the picture is murkier over at Ferrari. It's updated SF-23 secured a spot on the front row in qualifying in the hands of Carlos Sainz but on race day the Scuderia's car was once again undermined by its lack of consistency.
Overall, Krack believes that it's too early to draw any conclusions regarding a change of the running order up front based on the updates introduced by Aston's adversaries.
The Luxemburger also believes that Alonso's mistake in qualifying that damaged the floor of his AMR23 was also factor that contributed the Spaniard's relative under-performance.
"I think it is too early or too easy to say that, because we have not seen the full picture in qualifying," he explained.
"It's something that is similar to how it is in the beginning of the year, when we say we need three races to see where we are really.
"Now it could well be that others have made a bigger step. But our early analysis so far doesn't reflect that."
Krack admitted however that Aston's performance in Spain required an in-depth analysis.
"Because when we look later in the race, when we had the hard tyres on for example, we were completely in the game again compared to the competitor," he said.
"So, we really need to understand what's happened in the beginning there. It went obviously overcast very quickly, from very sunny to overcast, which we thought would help the soft tyres.
"But we need to understand why there was this difference in competitiveness at different times of the race."
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