Mike Krack believes the reason for Aston Martin's poor qualifying form is down to the layout of recent circuits on the calendar. Despite scoring in two of the last three races, Aston Martin have had to battle from lower on the grid. The Silverstone-based team have failed to progress from Q1 in each of the last three races, with one of their cars qualifying last at both the British and Austrian Grands Prix, leading to frustrated radio messages from their drivers. The Aston Martin Team Principal was asked for the reason behind their qualifying woes. "We struggle in the high-speed areas," Krack confirmed to the F1 Nation podcast. "Here [in Austria] we have four high-speed corners on a lap that is only one minute and 10 seconds. It was clear from the beginning that we were struggling."
Krack anticipating further struggles at French GP
Aston Martin had an outside chance of scoring points in Austria; Lance Stroll ran in the top 10 early on thanks to a longer first tyre stint, but ultimately could only finish in 13th. Sebastian Vettel, however, was unable to recover from his Sprint retirement and, after starting the Grand Prix in 18th, could only manage a 16th-place finish. He was demoted to 17th after picking up a five-second time penalty for exceeding track limits numerous times. Since the controversy surrounding their upgrade package at Barcelona, Aston Martin have been unable to make major inroads on the midfield runners, and are currently ninth in the Constructors' Championship. Krack cautioned that he did not anticipate much improvement in form at the next race; the French GP. "We will have to analyse deeply what we can do with it until Paul Ricard and then try to make one or two modifications to bring it a bit further up," he commented. "In Paul Ricard there are also [high-speed] sections, maybe a little bit less over the length of the lap, but still too many for us to be at the front."
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