Aston Martin has explained how having a 2024 Formula 1 car that is “tough to drive” has made its drivers more “exposed to the small gaps” between teams this term.
The Silverstone-based squad has been unable to recapture the competitiveness that saw it emerge as Red Bull’s closest contender in the nascent stages last season.
Having begun the current campaign where it ended the previous one with the fifth-fastest package, Aston Martin has regressed towards the midfield in recent rounds.
The updates Aston Martin took to Imola coincided with Fernando Alonso enduring an error-strewn weekend as Krack admitted its AMR24 was “more difficult to drive”.
Krack has revealed it is no closer to resolving the issue and the extra margin both Alonso and Lance Stroll are having to give is costing the side as the grid converges.
“Well, the car is quite tough to drive, and we have not managed to cure that so far,” Krack said in Canada.
“So what we need is a car more benign, easier to extract potential, give them more confidence.
“And we had something like that in the past, and that was much, much easier for the drivers.
“If you lack confidence in your car, then you cannot go to the maximum. You have to take margin and you are much more exposed to these small gaps that we are having these days.
“And then you can end up on the wrong side of it. And then you start a race much, much further back and there is no point. So it’s up to us to fix these issues.
“I would be happy if I could tell you in two races we have fixed everything.
“We’re working hard on it to cure these problems and we’re trying to bring these updates as quick as possible.”
Pressed on whether there was one overriding issue that was holding Aston Martin back, Krack replied: “If it was one overriding issue, we would have already fixed it.”
However, Krack has concurred with Alonso’s assessment that Aston Martin is operating at a level more aligned with a top team despite the results not supporting that.
The ex-Porsche engineer believes that the British marque is in a stronger place to attack the upcoming regulation overhaul coming in 2026 than it was 12 months ago.
“We are on a journey to become a bigger team, a top team,” he explained. “We have quite a lot of infrastructure projects in the making.
“And I think the comment that he [Alonso] made is probably related to last year, we had quite a lot of good results, but we were not ready as a team.
“We were in a different position. We still had our old factory. Nothing had really changed. I think we have grown over the 12 months, and that is what he refers to.
“Unfortunately, the results are not as good as they were last year, but this is very often circumstantial.
“Other teams have made more progress than we have done in comparison.
“But overall, it seems that we are in a better place, how we go about things, how we discuss things, how we make changes.
“And I think this is what he feels compared to last year. And yeah, I think this is something to build on going forward and the results will then come.”
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