Why Aston Martin must “take the positives” from its modest Japanese GP progress

Aston Martin’s Mike Krack has acknowledged one of the team’s cars reaching the chequered flag in Japan is no cause for celebration, but he feels the Formula 1 team and its Honda engine partner also need to appreciate the collaboration’s small wins.

The Aston Martin-Honda project suffered a woeful start with an engine that is uncompetitive and unreliable, with its vibrations also having an impact further downstream on the chassis and its drivers.

While there were no miracles for Aston and Honda on F1’s third grand prix weekend of the new rules cycle, the Japanese manufacturer’s home race was an important marker for the team to show progress.

In the hands of Fernando Alonso, the AMR26 finally completed its first grand prix distance, while team-mate Lance Stroll retired with a water leak on the internal combustion engine. Getting a single car to the finish was hardly a feat to celebrate for the ambitious squad. But at least it was something to hang on to, as well as the squad’s largest data gathering exercise so far.

“The mood in the team is no celebration, that is clear,” said team representative Krack. “But when you look back, in Melbourne we discussed doing six laps, in Shanghai we managed two sessions but we had a lot of work to be able to do all the sessions. This was not the case here, so the cars could be prepared normally between the sessions.

“Our objective – it is a modest objective, clearly – was to finish the race with both cars. We managed with one, so it’s one small step on the list with many, many small steps to be done. But as a team you cannot destroy yourself. We are in a difficult situation, we need to take the positives.”

Despite Aston bringing its first tranche of modest upgrades, Alonso finished a lapped 18th, well behind on pace compared to Sergio Perez at F1’s newcomer Cadillac. It shows that while other teams have been able to further exploit their launch packages, Aston’s initial lack of reliability means it has fallen further behind while being in firefighting mode.

“Unfortunately, as soon as you fix your reliability issues, everybody is just focusing on performance,” Krack added. “And looking at that, we have seen that we have some major steps to take. Not small steps that we have now done with reliability, but there are major steps to take. We have to use the break now to make the first step, but there is a big mountain to climb.”

Aston has continued to work on countermeasures to reduce to amount of vibrations the drivers are experiencing through the steering wheel, which was the cause of Alonso’s retirement in China. One potential tweak appeared to help in Friday practice, but Krack said the team “couldn’t race with it”. He hopes the disturbing topic will be definitively addressed at the next race in Miami, with Aston now afforded five weeks to get on top of it.

The lack of races in April is also an opportunity to make steps on both reliability and on car performance, but the Silverstone squad is under no illusion that there is some kind of magic bullet towards competitiveness, as its rivals will also aim to bring significant improvements to Miami on the first weekend of May.

If anything, having been able to gather much more data has further confirmed just how much Aston’s car is lagging behind too. “On the chassis side, I think we need to be honest that the performance deficit that we have, we have our part in that,” Krack admitted.

“We are not great in high-speed corners, we are not on the weight limit. So, there is stuff that we have to work on hard going forward. If we can solve this, we will make steps forward. At the same time, we know that Honda does not want to be where they are. So, they are pushing as much as they can.

Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin Racing

Photo by: Alastair Staley / LAT Images via Getty Images

When asked by Autosport about the team’s timeline on adding performance to the car, Krack replied: “We both have a lot of work ahead. I think we need to use these five weeks to make a step. We will not close the gap come Miami, but we will try everything to reduce it. And how much it will be, we will see.

“We must not forget that F1 is not standing still; our competitors will for sure also work hard. And with the intensity that you have in a racing season, it is tough to close gaps. And we need to be aware of that and push hard. There is no magic recipe to that.”

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– The Autosport.com Team