After a flying start to the season that sent expectations soaring sky-high, it's been a more subdued time of late for Aston Martin as their early advantage has ebbed away.
Fernando Alonso finished on the podium in five of the first six races, and was also second in Canada and the Netherlands. He's continued to qualify in the top ten in every race, but Singapore saw his first failure to score points.
Despite the relative decline, Alonso remains forth in the drivers championship ahead of Ferrari duo Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc, while the team is fourth in the constructors standings with 49 points in hand over McLaren.
Aston team principal Mike Krack says that morale within the squad remains high despite not quite managing to sustain its early run of form, and that they're optimistic of reviving their fortunes in the remainder of 2023.
"Surprisingly strong, all of them, especially in the garage," he told Tom Clarkson on the F1 Nation podcast when asked how morale was at Aston's new headquarters at Silverstone and on the road.
“You can see everybody wants to get back to the podium," he continued. "Everybody liked this experience from the beginning of the year, so the morale is strong, and it is something that we need to keep up.
“But also, we need to not only talk about it - we need to bring upgrades, we need to bring our car back into a better window, and then the morale is anyway good.”
Krack was asked whether the team had much still to come in terms of upgrades and new development on the AMR23 before turning the spotlight on next year's car.
“This is one of the most difficult questions," he admitted. "When you look back over the last races it’s very difficult to make predictions.
“At the beginning, we thought you look at this track or this track and thought here we are going to be a bit better and here we are going to be a bit worse.
"But the last races have told us that any team can be on the back foot, anytime," he pointed out.
“We've seen it in Singapore with the guys that have won the championship," he said, referring to Red Bull's one-off slump. "We've seen it in Monza, we were less competitive. We've seen in Zandvoort, Ferrari were less competitive.
“It’s going up and down I think for everybody, and it’s really difficult to predict what is going to happen from now until the end.”
Aston Martin picked up just four points in the most recent race in japan thanks to Alonso finishing in P8. But a double podium for McLaren meant that their rivals claimed 33 points, eating into the gap between them in the standings.
At that rate, McLaren would easily catch and pass Aston for fourth in the championship before the season finale in Abu Dhabi at the end of November as predicted this week by Lando Norris.
But Krack was more circumspect about their prospects: “We cannot say what will happen now until the end," he said on the podcast.
"We have no influence over what they are doing, so we need to maximise our own package, at all times, in each session, to get the maximum out of it and try to make it a fight until the last race.”
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