Aston Martin boss Mike Krack believes that sharing Mercedes’ Formula 1 wind tunnel is “too easy an excuse” behind the team’s poor pace in 2024.
Krack and Aston Martin burst out the starting blocks in 2023 with six podiums in the first eight rounds of the season but slipped down the pecking order as the year went on.
In 2024, the Silverstone-based F1 squad started the year as the fifth fastest team, but once again has found its development fraught with difficulty.
Aston Martin has specific times when it can use Mercedes’ wind tunnel, but Krack insists that isn’t behind it slipping into a midfield scrap with Haas, RB and Williams.
“I think that would be too easy of an excuse,” said Krack.
“We have another team using the same wind tunnel with less time. So this is not an excuse.”
Aston Martin hasn’t featured on the podium in 2024, and sits fifth in the Constructors’ standings with 86 points, 243 points behind Mercedes.
The gulf between the two led Krack to surmise that “with the same tool, we could do better.”
F1 future looking brighter for Aston Martin
Sharing a wind tunnel is an issue that Aston Martin only has to endure for a few more months.
The revitalised Aston Martin Silverstone headquarters features a state-of-the-art new wind tunnel which will come online in the new year.
This is just one part of Team Owner Lawrence Stroll’s vision to make Aston Martin a front-running F1 team.
A works engine partnership in 2026 with Honda will power the cars coming out of Aston Martin’s new wind tunnel.
The team’s technical efforts will be bolstered in 2025 and beyond by new hires Enrico Cardile (Chief Technical Officer) and Adrian Newey (Managing Technical Partner).
The promise for the future can’t be the reason Aston Martin is underperforming in the present however, according to Krack.
“If you are a team in the building process, it’s not only to put the wind tunnel there but also to have the technology and the methodology and the way you go about testing,” he explained.
“We were a customer team for many years and you have to build all these things in parallel, but if that is the choice you make, you should not use it as an excuse afterwards.
“You have that part [the wind tunnel] that has to be developed, but you have also a car to be developed and you must not use one to excuse the other.”
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