Krack: Aston Martin not worried by Mercedes or Ferrari threat

Aston Martin boss Mike Krack says he is not "really observing" what Mercedes and Ferrari are doing in Formula 1, preferring to focus on their own project.

Krack has led the team to second place in the 2023 standings after five races, with Fernando Alonso scoring four third place finishes to go with a fourth in the other.

The AMR23 has marked a step forward in performance to allow Aston to be in the fight for second behind Red Bull as both Mercedes and Ferrari have had poor starts to the season, with questions around their car concepts and revolutionary upgrades.

However, Krack believes Aston just need to continue to do their own thing and not worry about others.

Krack on Mercedes and Ferrari

"We're not really observing too much what is their situation, where do they come from or what do they do next," Krack told media, including RacingNews365.com, in Miami.

"We do our thing, we have our plan and it will not change so much if one of the other teams brings upgrades every race.

"Our plan cannot change because otherwise we are always reactive.

"It is important that you define yourself, put the roadmap in place, define what you need and you follow it, and obviously you need to react left and right depending on how the development goes.

"But you should not get too much taken away by what the others are doing.

"We're pushing quite hard on the developments, and we're quite confident that for the next events, the difference will not be too big as the development race goes on.

"But then what comes after say mid-season, we cannot say at this stage because we have to see who has spent how much and where you are at that stage."

Ferrari have pace in car

Between them, Mercedes and Ferrari have just two podiums (one apiece) to their names after the Miami Grand Prix, with the former set to be a large upgrade package to Imola in the hopes of starting to head in the right direction.

As for Ferrari, they have had a messy season with reliability concerns and a car which is lacking in race pace compared to the other front-runners.

But Krack feels their underlying potential has been there from the start.

"We must also not forget that they have always been fast from the first race," he said.

"But they always had issues, Charles [Leclerc] was in P3 in Bahrain when he had the DNF, and we gained from it, and then in Jeddah there was the penalty.

"In Australia they had the incident in Turn 1, so I think they were always there, but it did not materialise at the end of the day, but they have never been slow."