Mike Krack, Aston Martin, Jeddah Corniche Circuit, 2022

Aston Martin ‘will be in better shape in a couple of races’ – Krack

2022 F1 season

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Aston Martin will improve their car performance in “a couple of races” time once they bring upgrades to their car, says team principal Mika Krack.

The team have endured a difficult start to the season, scoring their first points of the year only in the fourth race at Imola.

Krack expects the team will improve their performance over the coming rounds once they introduce upgrades to the AMR22 and better understand how they work with their car.

“I think in a couple of races we will be in better shape,” Krack said. “It would be foolish to say in ‘race X’ or ‘race Y’, because even if you bring new parts on, you always need to understand them and you need to understand what job you have done.

“Say, for example, we bring a big package for Miami and we know there is rain or whatever and we don’t make it work. You create a lot of expectations and then everybody will consider you have failed.

“Take the sprint [in Imola] – we have only one session on Friday, you bring a big update and you have no chance at all to test it or to consolidate if it works or not. So from that point of view, I think it’s very important not to say a specific event, especially to the outside world.

“We have our internal plans, you will understand that I don’t want to go into detail there, but I think in a couple of races we should be in better shape.”

There are three key areas of development that the team are focusing their efforts on with the AMR22, says Krack.

“One is aero, the most important one,” Krack said. “Second one is car weight, very important as well.

“The third one is how can we provide better feedback to our driver. That goes with different inputs into the suspension, it goes to the steering and these kind of things, the vertical and the whole set-up of the car. So we need to try and give the driver a better feel for the car so that they can extract more from it.”

The difficulty that drivers Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll appear to have had in getting to grips with the handling of these new ground effect cars for 2022 is partly due to the limited mechanical feedback they are receiving from the car, Krack says.

“This is also why I think we had so many incidents at various tracks like, for example, in Melbourne, when our drivers went off quite a lot,” Krack explained.

“This is not normal – drivers of this quality don’t go off all the time. So I think we made a small step here already by some small updates, and we’re looking forward to doing more.”

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Will Wood
Will has been a RaceFans contributor since 2012 during which time he has covered F1 test sessions, launch events and interviewed drivers. He mainly...
Claire Cottingham
Claire has worked in motorsport for much of her career, covering a broad mix of championships including Formula One, Formula E, the BTCC, British...

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8 comments on “Aston Martin ‘will be in better shape in a couple of races’ – Krack”

  1. Montmelo is a given location choice for upgrades as all teams always bring something for the Spanish GP – nothing secret about this well-known tradition, so redundant evasiveness.
    However, they might be in better shape, but whether this means better results is another matter as other teams will also do development, so entirely relative.

  2. Who’s Mika Krack?

    1. Cristiano Ferreira
      3rd May 2022, 17:27

      Someone who is bound to Krack under pressure.

    2. Ben Dover’s Finnish cousin.

  3. Last year, this team couldn’t get a grip on someone else’s two-year-old design through the entire season.

    I’ll be positively surprised if they get a grip on their own, so-far dismal design in a matter of two or three months.

  4. Clearly they missed a chance to make a huge step this year but it’s important they understand their failures and identify how to fix them for the future as the regulations are here to stay. It’s pretty clear that they have aero stability issues but lack the raw mechanical pace to mask some problems like Mercedes. I think there is still a chance of them climbing back into the midfield this year though.

    1. I agree. The Otmar led team could not fix the issues on the copy-cat car, which I might add was a master stroke, had covid not messed up their 1 year plan and extended it to 2 years with the same car and some modifications in between.
      The team then switched to the 2022 car and produced a dud again. I heard that the car was designed with easy modifications in mind, as in whatever they see on other cars could be quickly adopted to the car.
      Well, this could be good if they can copy the RBR really fast. Or Ferrari. Both seems to be shoulders above the rest. The RBR seems more complete as there is no porpoising on their car, while the red cars are bouncing like a ping-pong ball.
      if AMR can fix the bouncing issues and bring stability to the car, and drop some weight, they will be in mid-field and could start working on performance upgrades.
      At this moment, they are not focusing on that. They run a higher ride height, to stop porpoising but at this point I would just slam the car and see what happens. The Ferrari’s porpoise all race long and still super fast.

  5. AM will be in a better shape, or else it Might Krack.

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