Team principal Mike Krack says there is “huge momentum and huge energy” within Aston Martin as a result of its strong start to the 2023 season.
Aston Martin finished seventh in the constructors’ championship last year but is currently second, level on points with Mercedes but ranked ahead thanks to two consecutive podiums for Fernando Alonso. With Alonso leading the opening two laps of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Krack says such moments provide a boost that is clearly tangible within the team.
“It’s incredible — you cannot believe it if you do not live it,” Krack said. “There is a huge momentum and huge energy in the team — I am looking forward to going to work because everyone is flat out, flat out, flat out. You have to push people out to go home to see their families at times.
“All weekend (during Saudi Arabia) we had mission control, people in the office, that were just looking at stuff and analyzing, trying to improve. So it’s really a pleasure to work in the team.”
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Although Alonso has been third behind a Red Bull one-two in each of the opening two races, Krack says he’s not convinced that Aston Martin is second-quickest overall, even if he was pleasantly surprised by the pace shown in Saudi Arabia.
“One is the race result, the other one is where are you? We always said we want to wait for the first three races to see where we are. I think we need to be careful saying second — I think we can safely say we have made a substantial improvement.
“We were cautious in expectation because you look what was different to Bahrain and we felt we were maybe a bit less competitive in high-speed section in Bahrain than in other sections, but obviously there was a lot of saving going in in Bahrain as well, so you do not really know, and it was this not knowing that’s what made us cautious about what we were going to see.
“And secondly is the straight-line performance, so basically the two things that we thought we were not the greatest in Bahrain were dominant (in Jeddah) and that made us be cautious.”
That caution continues when Krack looks ahead to the rest of the season, as he feels Mercedes and Ferrari are so close in terms of outright race pace.
“We have two data samples from two completely different tracks and in these two tracks we were competitive but there are others. It is a relative game — it could also be that one of the competitors had issues that we are not aware of and that would remix the order.”