Mike Krack has detailed the steps Aston Martin were forced to take to try and overcome their Formula 1 DRS problems over the Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend. The Silverstone squad were hit with problems affecting their rear-wing system throughout the Baku weekend - with Fernando Alonso believing it cost him a shot of qualifying higher than sixth on Friday for Sunday's race. In the end, Alonso managed to finish fourth in the Grand Prix, helped by an audacious overtake on Carlos Sainz while Lance Stroll came home in seventh, losing sixth to Lewis Hamilton after a mistake at Turn 16. And while boss Krack did not know what had caused the problem with the flap, he did talk about some of the steps Aston took to try and rectify the issue.
Aston's DRS problems
"It was more of a distraction than a genuine disadvantage, because the DRS was working on the back straight," Krack told media, including RacingNews365. "It was obviously a small penalty, but in both the sprint and the race, it worked, and when we did the analysis of qualifying, we lost mainly in sector two, which is not the DRS zone. "So obviously a distraction, and a lot of the team is then focusing on that, so that is the reason you don't want to have issues in one session, but overall, we managed to solve it. "We would have liked to solve it earlier or not have it in the first place, but at the end of the day, it's not such a drama. "The car is in parc ferme [after FP1 on Friday], so there's not much you can do. "You try and clean the surfaces [to remove any debris], check your gaps and everything, and we did everything with the FIA, who were very helpful on this. "You will have seen that we changed one flap on Fernando's car, this was after a routine check basically if you pull all the time on the fly when it is not moving, you put stress on it. "So for safety, we wanted to change it."
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