Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack dismissed any notion that the team's move into its new factory last season was the cause of its mid-season slump, insisting the Silverstone-based outfit never had “too much on its plate”.
Aston Martin emerged at the outset of the 2023 Formula 1 season as a surprise contender, closely challenging Red Bull and securing six podiums in the first eight races, courtesy of Fernando Alonso's impressive performances.
However, the team's momentum began to wane in the latter half of the year, largely due to unintended consequences from a series of upgrades aimed at improving its performance.
This, coupled with the rapid development of its rivals – Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren – saw Aston Martin lose ground and ultimately finish the season in fifth place, despite accumulating 225 more points than in 2022.
Krack acknowledged that the team had anticipated a decline in competitiveness but admitted that it came sooner than expected.
“At the beginning of the year, when we had these good results, I always had my finger up and said: ‘We will have more difficult times’. And they came, unfortunately, much quicker than we wanted them,” Krack told Autosport.
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The team’s relative regression came exactly at the same time as its big move into its new state-of-the-art headquarters at Silverstone.
But Krack says the team was fully aware of the challenges that the transfer into its new factory would bring and had proactively planned for them.
Krack instead attributed the team's decline to the delayed realization of the detrimental effects of its upgrades, which had a significant impact on the car's overall performance, coupled with the improvements of its competitors.
©AstonMartin
“I’m not the kind of guy that looks for excuses,” commented the Aston team boss.
“We knew before that we would move. We knew before that we were expanding. We knew before that we were still growing. So if you know that before, you can plan all these things, and you should not use it as an excuse – it’s too easy.
“When we started the season, we were confident that we had made a good step forward. And we were surprised that others were struggling.
“But then, the competition started to improve, and we did not manage this improvement. We also had our upgrades, but we never made such big steps with our upgrades as our competition did. This resulted in others slipping in between.
“So the gap to the fastest car, which is the objective that we’re using, has not changed that much over the season. But now, there are three or four different teams in between, whereas in the beginning, there was none, you know?
“So it’s basically: what has the competition done, and what have we not done enough? But having too much on our plate doesn’t matter.”
After F1’s season finale last November in Abu Dhabi, Alonso emphasized the need for Aston Martin to make significant strides in order to challenge for podiums and title contention.
But Krack is taking a more measured approach to his team’s 2024 campaign. While acknowledging the need for Aston to take its performance to the next level, the Luxembourger says its focus is on a gradual and sustainable development path, rather than on seeking immediate breakthroughs.
“We honestly have to zoom out a little bit, over a three- or four-year period rather than race by race or season by season,” he argued.
“If we do not finish in a higher position next year than we do this year, people will see it as a failure. I think you have to differentiate it a little bit more, but the nature of the business is championship position.”
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