Aston Martin’s 2024 season has been a continuation of the struggles they faced in the latter half of 2023. This year the team failed to reclaim their early momentum of the last campaign, with the team finishing in fifth place, way behind the top runners in terms of points.
Mercedes in 4th had a gap of 375 points, with Aston Martin finishing a whopping 572 adrift of Constructors’ Champions McLaren.
The team have often asserted that their AMR24 has been a difficult beast to tame and blamed the lack of competitiveness on this. Updates did not help at all, leading to the departure of Dan Fallows.
Super difficult car but drivers close in performance
Following the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi, Team Principal Mike Krack claimed in his written media session that there is not much difference between Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll.
Krack highlighted moments where Stroll showed flashes of potential. In Q1, the Canadian was faster than Alonso as the Spaniard just made it through in P15.
However, Alonso showed his class by putting half a second into the 26-year-old by the end of Q2 as he made a significant step forward in lap time, showing the unpredictability of the car according to the Aston boss.
“The car is super difficult.
“I’ll give you an example. Yesterday, if Lewis [Hamilton] does not have the bollard, we are out with Fernando in Q1.
“So it is sometimes just very, very small margins that make this difference.
“We saw Lance yesterday with, I think, on used tyres, a brilliant Sector 2, faster than Fernando on new,” he said.
“It is really this getting together or sometimes being in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The 52-year-old claims that the two drivers were not separated by much.
“I think overall there was not much between the two. When you look at it objectively, we have a gap over the season that we try to find and analyse.
“And as I said, yesterday we could have ended up with Fernando out in the first session.”
Krack avoids blaming drivers and instead points to car performance
Krack spoke about the car’s unpredictable nature and how tough it has been for the team, especially in Qatar, where the Spaniard had a time deleted after his first Q3 run.
With the characteristics of the AMR24, keeping it on track while maintaining decent speed was difficult, and Krack says it’s unfair to judge Alonso versus Stroll because of that.
“I think when the car is so difficult, you can never predict anything. We have seen in Qatar, Fernando had two runs cancelled, two laps, because the car is just so difficult that anything can happen at any time.
“So it’s always like just balancing on the absolute limit. You cannot drive like that because in the race, you cannot do like in qualifying, when you have the extra grip and everything.
“In a race, you have to take margin because you will go off.
“I don’t even want to start any kind of question about drivers, because what we have delivered to the drivers has not been good enough.”
Do his statements stand up?
Despite Krack’s defence, the statistics and analyses reveal a stark difference between Alonso and Stroll. Alonso has always had the upper hand on Stroll in all the metrics across the 2023 and 2024 seasons. This season, Alonso has out-qualified Stroll 19-5 and holds a 17-7 advantage in race results.
The two-time champion finished ninth, behind the race winners, while Stroll ended up 13th, with a 46-point gap between the two. The points difference shows that the scale is hugely titled in Alonso’s favour.
Stroll failed to score after the 2024 summer break, while Alonso added 21 points to his total despite Aston slipping to around 7th or 8th fastest from Zandvoort onwards as Alpine and Haas made big steps.
In 2023, Alonso’s six podiums secured fourth in the drivers’ standings, while Stroll finished 10th, 136 points behind. Closing just half this gap would have seen the Silverstone-based team finish fourth in the constructors’ standings.
The team has consistently defended the Stroll and will continue to do so. It’s typical for a team principal to defend his drivers, but the stats may not align. However, the team often has a clearer perspective than spectators, pundits, and experts.
