Aston Martin Team Principal Mike Krack says it aims to replicate the biggest teams in Formula 1 with the introduction of regular updates to “eliminate weaknesses”.
The Silverstone-based squad emerged at the beginning of last term as a regular scorer of podium results but regressed once the development race commenced.
Aston Martin had underlined that its main ambition with its 2024 challenger was to assemble a strong platform that could be improved throughout the campaign.
But while Fernando Alonso qualified a stellar sixth in Bahrain, the Spaniard dropped to ninth while Lance Stroll recovered from being last at Turn 1 to score one point.
Krack had teased Aston Martin had “promising” upgrades in the pipeline and has revealed that the team will add some minor new parts this weekend in Saudi Arabia.
“We see the development,” Krack told Autosport. “Because when you have race one, the development is not at race one level, it’s further ahead. And we see some encouraging development there. So that makes me confident.
“[For Jeddah] we will have some small developments to improve the car. And we hope that we can be closer. And then we have to see if Fernando can pull another lap out like yesterday, that will help us to come more forward.”
Krack has urged caution over the lap time gain that could be derived from the upgrades but outlines how Aston Martin aims to be aggressive with development in 2024.
“In Jeddah, if it’s big or not, that’s a different question,” he added. “The cars are never staying the same from one race to the next. Every team is changing stuff. Every team is optimising all the time.
“Maybe not all teams, but I think certainly the big teams they always modify, they try to eliminate weaknesses as quickly as possible. And we try to do the same.”
Krack echoed Alonso’s comments that Aston Martin wasn’t disappointed with ninth and 10th in Bahrain as he believes the team has a solid position to build upon.
“The target from the first moment was to score with both cars,” he said regarding Aston Martin’s showing in the opening race. “We said that has to be really the target. And we managed that. So mission completed, but we would obviously like to have more points.
“It’s early days. We tried really to get a decent balance for short run, for long run, over the three days. But I think it is it is a very good baseline.”
The Aston Martin boss also noted that the team’s storming start to the previous campaign was aided by Ferrari and Mercedes struggling with limited car concepts.
“We must not forget that we are also often measured around the podiums of last year,” he highlighted. “But it was more a ranking thing than really pace.
“We had issues with the red cars, we gained a little bit from the circumstances as well.
“But if we are really objective, and we look at our performance, we can see that it was not that great at the time. The result was, but we were still quite far behind.”
Red Bull’s dominance continued under the latest ground effect rules with Max Verstappen cruising to victory with a 22-second margin over team-mate Sergio Perez.
However, with a record 24-round calendar this season, Krack contends that it would be premature to crown the Austrian outfit as the champions at this nascent stage.
Asked about the chances of other teams reducing Red Bull’s lasting deficit, Krack replied: “I cannot make any prediction on that. But the fact is we have 24 races, we have seen last year you can make developments, you can make recoveries. I would not say let’s switch off the TV now!
“I think everybody will push as much as they can. And there are some great teams around, so I would not be surprised if some of the others catching up or doing good developments.
“We’re not fighting Red Bull at the moment, we’re trying to fight the cars that are in front of us, which was McLaren and Mercedes today. And this is the first gap that we need to close.”
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