Aston Martin’s Mike Krack: “Scoring points today was always going to be a challenge”

Mike Krack, the Team Principal of the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team, admitted the Spanish Grand Prix was always going to be a difficult one for the team, particularly after both Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll were eliminated in Q1 during Saturday’s Qualifying session.

Vettel attempted a two-stop strategy in a bid to break into the points but came up just short in eleventh, while Stroll was forced into an earlier than scheduled pit stop after tangling with Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly at turn one on lap twenty-eight that left him down in fifteenth at the flag.

Despite missing out on points, Krack says there were good signs with the updated AMR22 after the team arrived at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya with a heavily revised car compared to what they had in the opening five races of the season.

“From our starting positions of P16 for Sebastian and P17 for Lance, scoring points today was always going to be a challenge,” said Krack.  

“Nonetheless, both our drivers executed well their different tyre strategies – a Soft-Soft-Medium two-stopper for Sebastian and a Soft-Soft-Medium-Soft three-stopper for Lance – and the result was a P11 finish for Sebastian, whom we successfully managed to keep out of traffic wherever possible, and a P15 finish for Lance.

“Had Lance not lost quite a bit of time on lap 28 as a result of contact with [Pierre] Gasly, which not only tipped him into a spin but also necessitated an earlier second pit stop than we had been planning for him, he would have finished a few places farther up.

“He was not therefore able to convert his good race pace into a points result today, but it indicated the promising performance potential of our updated car.”

Krack praised the team for all the hard work they’ve put in to get the updated car to Spain, and he hopes they can unlock more of its potential in the upcoming races, starting with the Monaco Grand Prix this weekend.

“Finally, I want to pay tribute to the great work done by the team to get two updated cars ready for this event; we are all looking forward to working hard to achieve better results with them at Monaco next weekend and in the races to come,” he said.