F1 News, Reports and Race Results

Aston Martin's Krack: We must give our drivers 'better tools'

Aston Martin team boss Mike Krack says the Silverstone-based outfit must provide its drivers with a better car in upcoming races after an exhausting "damage limitation" race at Monza last weekend.

Fernando Alonso managed to score 2 points as he finished ninth in the Italian Grand Prix while Lance Stroll concluded his race a lowly 16th.

There were little positives to take way for the team, and that was perhaps not unexpected given the inherent weakness of Aston's AMR23 on low-downforce tracks.

Still, the underperformance coupled with Ferrari's double top-four finish pushed Aston back to fourth in F1's Constructors Championship behind the Scuderia.

Krack stressed that Aston must now make the most of the lessons it has taken away from Monza to offer a better car to its drivers, not only in upcoming races but especially at high-speed, low downforce venues, such as Las Vegas next November.

"The term damage limitation I think we stressed it a bit too much already," said Krack after the race, quoted by Motorsport.com.

"Yes, two points. But we lost a position to Ferrari. And the most important thing is that we take the lessons learned for Las Vegas, and also for next year.

"So I think it's really important. We had similar issues last year when we came here, and we need to do a step forward in these kinds of circuits."

©AstonMartin

Krack said that the team's medium-to-hard one-stop strategy and the tyre degradation that it induced in the latter stages of each stint proved taxing for Alonso and Stroll.

"I think honestly, both drivers did a fantastic job, because the car was really difficult to drive," he said.

"They were both finished. And honestly, we have to give our drivers a better car, they drove themselves out of out of it. You should have seen them, they were really, really exhausted.

"Obviously, we did such a strategy, you take all the tyre degradation with you when you do a one-stop, but it was it was the thing to do. And it was difficult, and we need to give them better tools. Like this it's difficult to race for good points."

©AstonMartin

Like its rivals, Aston is progressively winding down its development programme. Nevertheless, the team still has a few updates in its pipeline to improve its AMR23.

"We have a list of things still coming from now to the end of the season. Vegas I think is the second to last race, and we hope that some of these updates are helping to do that," said the Aston boss.

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Michael Delaney

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