How Aston Martin came back from F1 abyss to move up midfield

F1

Aston Martin's season looked desperate at the start of the year, but now its technical turnaround has helped it climb up the midfield, as team boss Mike Krack explains

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Aston's US showing indicated how much it has improved over the season

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This has not been an easy season for Aston Martin, but the last three races have seen a remarkable transformation. Having languished in ninth place just a few weeks ago, ahead only of Williams, a string of good results has seen the Silverstone outfit leapfrog Haas and AlphaTauri and close in on sixth placed Alfa Romeo.

After Austin the gap to the Swiss team is just three points, and given that the momentum is clearly with Aston, there would seem to be a good chance that the team can do enough in the final three events to bag that sixth place.

“There is a lot of positive spirit, a lot of positive energy” Mike Krack

If that happens it will be a huge morale boost to everyone in the camp after the team struggled for much of the season to live up to the hype associated with the brand, and encouraged by the spending spree on top technical names. A leap of three places in the constructors’ table also represents a significant jump in income from the F1 organisation, and while Lawrence Stroll is hardly short of funds, it all helps.

“It’s very positive in the team,” said team boss Mike Krack of the recent surge. “At home, mission control, here on track, everybody’s really, really focused. I think we have now scored 30-ish some points in the last 10 races.

“So the trend is for us – but we are concentrated. And one of the good things today [at COTA] was how we could have gotten Alfa. We said, okay, then we do it next time. There is a lot of positive spirit, a lot of positive energy, in the factory and here. So very encouraging.”

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Aston was on the back foot from the season opener in Bahrain

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The revival began with sixth for Lance Stroll and eighth for Sebastian Vettel in Singapore, and was followed by sixth for the German in Japan. In the USA Stroll ran as high as third at the start, Vettel led for a couple of laps during the pit stop sequence, and the pair looked set to ultimately secure a net sixth and seventh.

Then it all went wrong, with Stroll retiring after contact with future team-mate Fernando Alonso, and Vettel dropping out of the top 10 after a dodgy pit stop.

Somehow Vettel found the pace with which to recover to eighth, fighting off Kevin Magnussen on the last lap. It was a good comeback, but overall the team had lost a sixth place and valuable points that came with it. However, Krack denied that it was frustrating to have missed out.

“Frustrating is a big word,” he said. “I’ve tried to take the positives and there are many, many positives. And I think it will be wrong to say now, yeah, we had a long pitstop, or an incident on track. This can happen to anyone.

“And I think if we gain or lose sixth position, it was not because of today. This weekend, there were a lot of positives, and I bank on them, we will analyse the pit stop, and we will do the correct action.”

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Krack highlights Melbourne as a particular low point for the Silverstone team

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The gap to Alfa is only three points, but Krack says there is no guarantee that Aston can steal that sixth place.

“We need to respect Alfa Romeo,” he said. “They had also an update here, they were pretty fast in qualifying as well. It is not a given that we will make it.

“And also, we must not forget the results of teams behind that are not far, that if we have a double DNF, it could quickly swing in the other direction.”

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Seeing the cars running so strongly early in the United States Grand Prix was hugely encouraging for everyone in the camp.

“We had quite a good start for both, running in P3 and P5,” said Krack. “And we actually just wanted to manage the tyres. And we were quite comfortable with doing so. Then we knew that [Sergio] Perez and [Charles] Leclerc were going to come through, and they were anyway not in our race.

“We decided upfront, when they come, we’ll let them through. Because the most ambitious position that we could aim for, was P6 and P7. And we went from there. Actually, maybe it was quite easy at this point to drive in free air and manage your tyres.

“And then after the stop, obviously, we had the safety car, and that started a bit to spoil the day for Lance, and especially because he had just done his pitstop. So, he lost the position, I think to Sebastian, and then had Fernando behind him.

“And then I think it was on the restart lap that where Fernando came out of him and I think he moved late and Lance saw him at the last moment, Lance wanted to close off. And then unfortunately they touched. So that was that it essentially.”

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The team feels it has got top of early issues

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Krack was keen not to blame either Stroll or his future driver Alonso: “For me was it was a racing incident. I’m sure if you speak to Fernando, he has his view. Lance has his, but I think they came back from the stewards, it was not a very heated discussion as far as I understand.

“I think Lance wanted to close or close the line off. He didn’t zigzag, he didn’t brake test. He didn’t go off throttle. He was just trying to go when already Fernando was there, so for me it was racing incident.”

The pitstop delay that spoiled Vettel’s race was one of those things.

“The car was a little bit offset on the jack. So it slipped, it rolled basically on the jack, and then we couldn’t get the tyres properly off, and then especially we could get the tyre off, but then to put the next one on, it was not possible to put to put the nut properly on.

“We have to take the jack off, jack up again, and change it.”

Vettel’s recovery was impressive, but there was good reason for it, as he made good use of fresh tyres.

“I mean the car was good all weekend,” said Krack. “Honestly, when we did the pitstop it was just banking the result, it was not about trying to be inventive or anything because otherwise we would have gone for the [soft] C4, which we elected not to do, everybody behind us was on very used medium or very used hard. So we said if we go conservative, we bring it home.

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Aston was mixing it further up the front before dropping back at Austin

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“Then things went little bit different than we had hoped for! And then all we can do is try to recover, and the only thing you have is the delta tyre age, which seemed to be enough to come back through.”

As at the previous two races, everything seemed to come together for Aston at COTA. Efforts to make the car quick over one lap in qualifying also paid off when the drivers were running on their own, rather than in traffic, as is so often the case for midfield teams.

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Aston hasn’t got to this place by chance, and it took a lot of graft to get the most out of the car after a poor start to the season, including the low of Australia, where there was a series of crashes with a car that was tricky for the drivers.

The new recruits, led by technical director Dan Fallows, have been finding their feet and starting to contribute.

“It’s about hard work, analysing your weaknesses,” says Krack. “The team was not lazy before. When you start like that, there is only one way to work yourself out, analysing your weaknesses, and trying step by step to eliminate them.

“Now, if you ever would have told me that we were [three points] behind the Alfas fighting for sixth with three races to go, I would probably not have believed you, especially when you remember the pieces that were lying around in Melbourne.

“But it shows you also that you should not give up. And we never did. And this is the positive, in the worst moments, we stuck together. And we really have to try and get sixth this year.”

The recent progress has been hugely encouraging for the whole team.

“Yeah, this is very positive. And we must not underestimate the dynamic that results from something like that, when you have your cars running high up. I have received five or six pictures from the factory where we were running first for the two laps.

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Krack and co firmly have their sights set on sixth in the championship

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“So it is something that people emotionally take on. And the dynamic that comes from that is very, very important. Because it means even if it was related to pit stops, and all that, but it means we are now at the other side of the field, sometimes at least. And I’m quite positive that this will develop into continuous positive energy.”

All of this feeds into next year, and the first Fallows car – and that will be the real test of whether Lawrence Stroll and his team hired the right people and made all the right choices.

“You will clearly see that there are a couple of things that we have tried, some directions we have tried on this car for next year, and they were positive, so we kept them on,” said Krack.

“But that does not mean that we will be automatically running on the front next year. We have to stay humble, and try to make the next step in Mexico, or maybe the coming three races, and then try to do another small step for next year.”

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