Aston Martin boss Mike Krack admitted the team would have slipped even lower than fifth in the standings had the 2024 Formula 1 season started at the summer break.
The Silverstone-based squad retained a spot inside the top five in the Constructors’ Championship, but logged 176 points less than it had done in the previous campaign.
Aston Martin once again struggled to build upon a positive start when mid-season updates didn’t deliver the anticipated gains and prompted a period of troubleshooting.
As a result, Fernando Alonso scored a meagre 18 points in the 10 rounds past the annual summer shutdown, while team-mate Lance Stroll was pointless during that run.
Krack has acknowledged that Aston Martin’s torrid conclusion to the season has meant that the turnaround the team needs to implement is greater than its end position.
“We delivered below expectation, so we cannot be happy with how our season went,” Krack told Motorsport.com.
“We stay in P5, but had the championship started in the summer, we would not finish in P5. So, I think in all we need to reflect on the season and see it very critically.
“The steps that we have brought to the car have not managed to improve the car and there is a little bit of parallel last year in all that.
“The difference is that we have started better last year and we have not started at that same high level this year.
“So, I think there’s plenty for us to look at in terms of how we how we do these things because we have now, two years in a row, not really managed to improve from where we started but rather slipped back.”
Lack of Aston Martin progress ‘a concern’
Krack was reticent in making excuses for Aston Martin’s lack of progress, aiming his focus on the AMR24 not being a sizeable step on its podium-scoring predecessor.
“The fact is that, independent of the others, you have a baseline car at the start of the year and you have a car at the end of the year, and you have some steps in between,” he said.
“I think the development curve from others has been much better than ours.
“Independent of where we have finished, the finishing positions of the first eight or nine races of 2023 has added a lot of pressure on the whole system.
“But the result, at the end of the day, whether you start the year in fifth fastest – or fourth, depending on how you look at it this year – or you started in second or third fastest, does not change the picture.
“It changed the picture to the outside. Like: ‘they have been so good and now they are so bad’.
“But, when I take the competitiveness, or the pecking order, when you take that out, you have a car that you start the season [with] and you have the car that you end the season [with] – how much have we improved it? I think here others have done a better job two years in a row and that is something that we need to really look at.”
Krack went on to add that a key way to reversing the underwhelming lack of progress is by forensically analysing the shortfalls, and being “critical with yourself”.
“You cannot just say, ‘it’s this, it’s this’,” he continued. “The level is too high to not look very thoroughly about what you are doing.
“Then you have to be self-critical. Did we take the right decisions at the right times? Should we have waited with maybe one or two steps until they are really proven properly?
“Or did we just rush into things because the pressure is high? So, it is all questions that we have to ask ourselves – critically – and take the right conclusions from it.”
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