Aston Martin issued Red Bull challenge: 'This is the standard we must get to'

Aston Martin has been challenged to begin executing Grands Prix and enjoy a reliability level similar to Red Bull if it wants to challenge at the top of Formula 1.

Eight podiums and more than five times as many points as in 2022 was the team's reward for a strong 2023 campaign, in which it had the nearest challenger to Red Bull over the opening races.

However, the team slipped back mid-season as upgrades did not work as intended, as it finished fifth in the standings, with Red Bull claiming 21 of 22 race wins.

While Performance Director Tom McCullough and boss Mike Krack were pleased with the progress made, both felt reaching the Red Bull level of trackside operations was a major goal for 2024.

Aston Martin must improve

"The team has generally executed weekends well, and in the past, we were very well-known for that," McCullough told media including RacingNews365.

"Now on top of that, we're obviously trying to design and develop a car to go fight at the front, and we had a rear wing in Suzuka with a manufacturing problem where it failed, the power unit, or actually exhaust problem, in Jeddah.

"It is these things that don't happen as a team if we want to fight right at the front and you have got to have perfect weekends, weekend in, weekend out.

"Another example, by Red Bull, is from the reliability side as well as the operational side.

"That is the standard we've got to get to and it is not just focusing on one area, there a lots of areas where we need small margins just to be better.

"We know that if we give our drivers good cars, they'll get us good results so that's what we've got to focus on doing."

Team Principal Krack added his ethos behind improvement was based on achieving three major goals.

"It is safety, reliability and then operations first," he said.

"With the operational side, if we do not manage to be at 100%, which we must in each session and each event over the whole year, if we do not manage that, we cannot extract the maximum performance, be it the driver, car, set-up or engineer.

"We must guarentee that we have this box ticked and we have failed to do so a couple of occasions this year, but we know we need to have it right."