Aston Martin must be self-critical regarding F1 trend

Team principal Mike Craik has admitted that Aston Martin needs to be self-critical in its analysis of why it has failed to make substantial improvements to its Formula 1 machinery in two consecutive seasons.

Silverstone-based outfit launches 2023 campaign as flying fernando alonso Early on he established himself as Max Verstappen’s closest rival lance stroll Impressed despite recovering from pre-season injury.

But Aston Martin failed to make progress, struggling to keep up with the development of its AMR23 compared to rival teams, and ultimately finished fifth in the constructors’ standings.

It was a similar story last season, but with the team starting fifth fastest on the grid and consolidating their position in the standings as the year went on, the AMR24 was often pushed down the order, with Haas, alpine And RB Once they developed their challengers they moved on from opportunity to opportunity.

Summing up the season, speaking to Motorsport.com, Crack said: “We performed below expectations, so we couldn’t be happier with how our season went.

“We remain in P5, but if the championship had started in the summer, we would not have finished in P5. So, I think overall we need to consider the season and look at it very seriously.

“The steps we’ve taken to the car haven’t improved the car and they all have a bit of a similarity to last year. The difference is we started better last year and we didn’t start as high.” level this year.

“So, I think there’s a lot for us to look at to see how we do these things because for two years in a row we haven’t really managed to improve from where we started but we’ve gone backwards. Have slipped.”

When asked whether low-hanging fruit for rivals was having a bad effect on Aston Martin, Crick insisted that the team should look within itself, saying: “The truth is that, independent of others, your The pass is a baseline car at the beginning of the year and at the end of the year you have a car, and in between you have some stages.

“I think the sequence of development from others has been much better than ours. Independent of where we finished, the final position of the first eight or nine races of 2023 has put a lot of pressure on the entire system. But the result, At the end of the day, whether you started the year fifth fastest – or fourth, depending on how you look at it this year – or whether you started second or third fastest, picture this. Does not change.

“It changed the outside picture. Like: ‘They were very good and now they’re very bad.’ But, when I look at competitiveness, or the pecking order, when you break it out, you have a car you start the season with (with) and you have a car you end the season with (with “How much have we improved on this? I think others have done a better job here over the years and that’s something we really need to look at.”

Alonso and Stroll achieved 13 top-10 finishes between them in the first half of last season, but managed only seven points-scoring finishes in the second half, all of which were earned by the two-time champions, with the team making some upgrades. . Late in the season.

Asked if the car had improved throughout the season, Krack replied: “We always try to be honest with ourselves and try to assess it.

“It’s a question where you often say, ‘We’ve improved it in this area, but we’ve also made it potentially worse in this area.’ So, I don’t think you’ll always have, like, ‘we’ve made this better in every area’ when you start out that way (quite apart from speed).

“But, seriously, I think it’s a concern. Because, if you’ve had it happen twice in a row, it’s not a one-time thing. It’s something you have to look at in your system.

“The progress we wanted to make – you set certain goals and you don’t achieve them. You don’t give the performance you want to give. You can put it down to all kinds of areas. You can say, ‘ It’s not the way it should be correlated’ but then other people are using the same tunnel, for example if you go about the aerodynamics (and say) ‘it’s not correlated’, then other people are correlated. Why is it happening and why is progress happening? are doing?

“So, you have to be critical of yourself. You can’t just say, ‘This is this, this is this’. The level of looking very deeply at what you’re doing is so high.

“Then you have to be self-critical. Did we take the right decisions at the right time? Should we have waited a step or two until they actually proved right? Or did we rush into things just because Because the pressure is too much? So, these are all questions we have to ask ourselves – critically – and draw the right conclusions from it.”