Aston Martin Team Principal Mike Krack has blamed "several issues" for the team's inability to compete for points at the Spanish Grand Prix. The Silverstone-based team turned heads by unveiling a heavily-updated car at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, with several areas of the car looking very similar to the Red Bull RB18. However, after a poor qualifying, Aston Martin were unable to extract a performance worthy of a points finish, with Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll finishing in 11th and 15th place respectively.
"Operational issues" the main reason for performance deficit
Speaking after the race, Krack attributed the lack of major improvement to reliability issues, performance compromises, and "operational issues". "It was several issues," Krack admitted to media, including RacingNews365.com . "It was a bit hotter, that caught us out on the balance. If you look at how the midfield is bunched together from P7 to P15, if you have one mistake, or a small issue, then you drop out immediately. "We got caught out a little bit, we had two or three small issues on the car that produced more oversteer than we would have anticipated. "Reliability issues was one [problem]. We had to reinforce two or three aerodynamic parts. The other thing was we had to adjust the cooling because it got even hotter than we predicted." Krack added that the need to learn more about the new aerodynamic package meant they were unsure on setup direction. "So we tried to go in the middle [of aero setups], and we had no data for that. So we were fishing in the dark. This is where you had this new bodywork coming into play, you really didn't know where you were, and this caught us out."
More to come from Aston Martin updates
Despite not being able to produce the huge leap forward that was hoped, Krack was cautiously optimistic by the testing carried out by the team. As with many of the upgraded cars on the grid, it remains to be seen if more pace can be extracted by Aston Martin to unlock the potential of their AMR22. Krack was adamant that the new aero package was "a step forward" in their bid to improve on ninth place in the Constructors' Championship. "It's quite early to say, because we [only] fitted everything on Friday, then it was much hotter than we were expecting," said Krack. "You have probably seen this big [aero] rake that we had on the back [of the cars]. On both cars we had to test different things. "From the data is very promising, but obviously in qualifying we could not extract what we wanted to from the car. But, it's a step forward."
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