Aston Martin Formula 1 boss Mike Krack says it’s too early to write-off the upgrade package trialled in Austin, despite the team having one of its toughest weekends of the year.
Krack says that Aston has to “keep cool” while analysing what could have been done better and coming up with a competitive spec for the Mexico City GP.
Although Fernando Alonso showed decent pace over one lap in qualifying the Spaniard finished only 17th in the sprint and 13th in the main race, while team mate Lance Stroll was 13th and 15th across the two events.
“Some people are always quick in making conclusions,” said Krack when asked about the upgrades. “I think when you bring new parts to a sprint event, we’re very carefully weighing whether we should do that or not.
“I think we have to go away and keep cool, look at what we have brought, because we have also made some substantial changes throughout the weekend, see where this leads us, and take the right decisions for Mexico. But I would not write them off as quickly as that.”
Krack stressed that the Hermanos Rodriguez track is very different to COTA.
“Mexico is very low-speed based, it’s at altitude,” he said. “It’s much less bumpy. And you will have different problems than you have [in Austin].
“And this is applying to everybody, you see people going up and down in the ranking, where you think, ‘Oh, these guys have made a step’ and even the next day, they struggle more.
“So I think it’s something that you really need to stay open-minded with all the solutions. I’m sure we will make the right decisions on what package and what parts do we take to Mexico to get best possible results.”
Krack admitted that Aston is still trying to understand the AMR24, despite it being so late in the season.
“Many people ask you by race 19 or by race 18 or year three in this regulation, how can you still be learning?,” he said.
“But the cars are extremely complicated. They’re driving on the ground. If you see Sector 1 [in Austin], I’m sure you have seen the footage, how the whole thing is bouncing around, how unstable everything is for all the cars.
“And this is something that you really need to understand. So we are learning. You have to keep learning, and try to keep understanding how you can improve with the tools you have, the situations that you have on track.”
He added: “Sometimes you also take a direction where you think, ‘oh, maybe we go back.’ This has happened to us. This has happened to many teams. And it is about accumulating the learnings that you have had over the last two or three seasons.
“It is clear that all the teams have driven the envelope into areas where it is not so predictable anymore, and you have to really work cleverly – like, ‘How far do I go not to create problems, and still be somehow stable and driveable?’”
