Krack on Stroll stoppage: Aston 'accumulating' too many issues

Aston Martin team boss Mike Krack said his outfit needs to do a better job and iron out the teething issues that have weighed on its running lately after Lance Stroll suffered a fuel system problem in FP2 at Monza.

Stroll, who had yet to put a single lap under his belt on Friday as rookie Felipe Drugovich's had taken over his car for FP1, was forced to park his AMR23 at the exit of the Ascari chicane at the beginning of FP2.

The technical issue inevitably disrupted Aston's running plans although the team collected most of the data in needed thanks to trouble-free session for Drugovich and Fernand Alonso.

But Krack was unhappy with events, insisting Aston has been hit with small reliability issues a little too often lately.

"You've seen what's happened again: we had planned to have Felipe in the morning and then we have a reliability issue in the afternoon," Krack told Sky Sports F1.

"So it's not very fortunate and we are currently accumulating these moments a little bit, and we have to do a much better job there, independent of which driver is in [the car]."

Read also:

• Krack: No 'debate' over Stroll's future at Aston Martin

Aston Martin performance director Tim McCullogh admitted that the issue on Stroll's car has left Team Silverstone "a bit on the back foot".

"It was a tough day really overall, because we didn’t run with one car in Free Practice 2, so that is a shame," said McCullogh.

"So we’re a bit on the backfoot there. It’s a fuel system problem, and unfortunately it was big enough that we had to take the engine off the car to sort it out.

"It should all be fine for tomorrow, it’s just a bit frustrating that when he sits out the Free Practice 1 session and he doesn’t get to do any laps, he’s a bit on the backfoot for the rest of the weekend."

From sixth in FP1, Alonso fell to P8 in the late afternoon session, but the Spaniard was satisfied overall with his day.

"It was a good day at Monza and the adrenaline was pumping," he said. "It's always nice to be back here. Very unique on a low downforce set-up."

Alonso said that he was sorry for the fans that attended the day at the Temple of Speed as this weekend's second trial of F1's 'Alternative Tyre Allocation' had constrained tyre usage and therefore the lap count.

"Not many laps obviously," he added. "For me, with this format, with the tyres, we cannot do any laps because we don’t have sets of tyres for practice.

"So we apologise to all the fans that came on Friday, they don’t see cars.

"It's the same for everybody and it will be tight tomorrow – from P6 to P16 it could be split by four tenths. We need to be sharp tomorrow."

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