Mike Krack believes the "small gaps" between leading Formula 1 teams offers a glimmer of hope for Aston Martin to return to second-fastest. The Silverstone-based squad started 2023 as the second-best to Red Bull, with six podiums from the first 12 races but has slipped back to what Fernando Alonso called fifth-fastest as Mercedes and McLaren introduced sweeping upgrades, although it remains third in the Constructors' Championship. Alonso did take fifth in Belgium for Aston's best result since second in Canada, with Krack conceding the challenge the team faces, but was optimistic.
Krack's Aston hope
"I mean under normal circumstances, you would say to gain three positions in such a field, over the short time of 11 events, it’s very hard and very ambitious," Krack told media including RacingNews365. "On the other hand, the gaps are very small. We have seen how much we have lost, and I think the most important is to recover that and try to recover a little bit more. "We have made developments to the car lately and it is true what you say, we have dropped in the pecking order. "We have lost ground a little bit to the fastest cars but also, we have seen that other competitor cars have slipped in-between and that made us drop back slightly. "Now, we have gone through a big cycle of analysis over the last races because you have different tracks that we have now in terms of characteristics. We had the Hungaroring, we had Silverstone, we had Barcelona than also the outlier in Canada where we were very competitive, and it takes you a little bit of time to understand all of that. "To understand what’s going on and understand what problems you have and what you might have introduced and might not have introduced, so we’re quite confident that we’ve found what the main problems are. Now it is about making the correct changes to get them solved. "These cars are very complex. So, it is not any more that you just add downforce, downforce, downforce, downforce. "Very often you introduce characteristic changes on your car, or you create other effects – and maybe this is what happened. "Again, we have to now iron-out these issues that we have introduced. The next question will be when? As quick as possible."
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