After a productive three days of testing in Bahrain which saw Aston Martin set competitive lap times across the board and encouraging mileage in the hands of Fernando Alonso and Felipe Drugovich, team principal Mike Krack remains cautious about the expectations heading into the 2023 season, saying the team’s main goal is to improve compared to its difficult 2022.
Photo Credits: Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team
Aston Martin’s seemingly much-improved AMR23 car was one of the main talking points in the paddock during the three days of pre-season testing in Bahrain, as the Silverstone squad showed promising signs that its new car can challenge right at the top of the midfield, if not higher.
Fernando Alonso managed the second fastest time on day one, just under 0.03s behind the pace-setter Max Verstappen in the Red Bull – which seems to be the fastest car of the field again, and continued the trend with impressive pace and consistency in long runs across the three days.
The Spaniard enjoyed two days of running in total in his new car, as the team reassessed its run plan after Lance Stroll’s bike injury whilst training for the season ahead meant the Canadian wasn’t fit to take part in the test – and there’s still a question mark on whether he will take part in the first race of the season.
Felipe Drugovich, the reigning Formula 2 champion and the team’s reserve driver, took part in two morning sessions for the team, and managed an impressive amount of mileage despite an early stoppage in the very first lap of the new car.
Speaking to media after the final day of testing, team principal Mike Krack gave his assessment on how the three days went for the team, stating that the despite the early issue the team was “happy” with its mileage but emphasized there’s always “questions” that remain heading into the season opener, also in Bahrain, next weekend:
“We had our plans of what we wanted to do over the three days. We had a little bit of an issue starting it with the first red flag of the test – which everybody looks at each other [like] ‘oh, this is not a good start’.
“But at the end of the day, I think we did more than 350 laps over the three days, which is quite good. From that point of view, we are happy that we completed all that we wanted to.
“You always want to do much more than you can do in three days. You have a huge list of requirements and requests from all kinds of departments, and you have to prioritise them,” said Krack. “The list does not become shorter, so each time we have done something, another topic comes up, so you can never say that you are finished, you are always having questions.
“This is also the nice bit about Formula One, that you always have to explore other directions, new ideas.”
Krack was adamant that the team will not change its expectations ahead of the season opener based on how their test went, reiterating that their main objective is to improve the car and that it will not get too distracted by the noise around it.
“I’m not so sure about that,” he said when asked about the team changing its expectations after the test. “It is very difficult on such a test to make a proper judgement. Last year, we were P10 and P4 over the three days, we are very similar now, and in the race weekend we were out in Q1. Just to tell you how much a test like that can give you an indication of where you are.
“For us, we must not lose our goals. Our goal was to make a step forward in the performance of the car, and this remains our objective – if we’ll manage it or not, we’ll see next week.
“I think we need to keep our feet on the ground,” said Krack. “The expectations are always high, and at this time of the year everybody wants to do well and talk others [up]. We are realists, we have a clear objective that is to improve compared to where we were last year, and then we will see.”
Fernando Alonso’s race simulation stint during the final day of testing caught the eye of many, as the Spaniard was able to keep up a very consistent pace for many laps, usually an indicator of a compliant car that uses its tyres efficiently. When asked about this long run, Krack pointed out several caveats that should be applied, and quoted his driver saying “there are no miracles” in Formula One.
“The race simulation was certainly not bad, but we must also not forget that the track conditions were really good, we had a lot of rubber [on the track] because there were a lot of teams doing [runs] on new tyres at the time, with soft rubber, and this is helping when you do a race simulation.
“Again, it is nice to have good long runs, but still you need to really put them into the right context and not start dreaming. I think Fernando [Alonso] said earlier, there are no miracles in Formula One.”
The Luxembourgish explained how the team still has question marks on reliability and can never be “super confident” heading into the season after just three days of running:
“You never feel that you are really prepared, to be honest. You have a huge list of open points after three days of testing, you’ve seen we have been standing in the garage at times, so there is a big list of points that we have to work on.
“Even if you have managed a lot of laps, it’s only three days, a lot of things can go wrong in the race. So you never feel super confident that you have all the boxes ticked in terms of reliability.”
Krack says the team had high hopes for the 2022, which were crushed to the ground as the team failed to score points for the first three rounds, mainly due to its struggles with a wrong car concept which suffered badly from porpoising. He confirmed the team doesn’t have such issues in 2023, which makes “a big difference”:
“[Last year] we had high hopes, we were also maybe a bit greedy, and it was [in Bahrain testing] that we discovered the big issues that we had around porpoising, which now we don’t have, and this makes a big difference.”
