Aston Martin ‘counting the days’ until long-awaited upgrade boost

Aston Martin chief trackside officer, Mike Krack, admitted the team is “counting the days” to its much-anticipated chassis update at the Hungarian Grand Prix. That boost is confirmed, as Krack declared the upgrade-less days over.

Work has been ongoing on the AMR26 over significant changes, with the team opting to bring one larger in-season update package rather than smaller, incremental upgrades through the season.

Krack ‘counting the days’ until Aston Martin upgrades arrive

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Aston Martin has found itself largely rooted to the back of the field this season, and updates to Cadillac and other teams has seen it cut somewhat adrift in recent rounds.

The weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix saw Fernando Alonso run a minute adrift of Valtteri Bottas up the road, who in turn was well behind the rest of the midfield on Formula 1’s arguably toughest circuit around battery deployment so far.

No official predictions have been made about how much closer these updates will bring the team to the rest of the pack, but Krack declared the team’s upgrade-less period over, and it hopes to be competitive with other teams moving forward.

“We are quite happy that we get some upgrades on the car,” Krack told PlanetF1.com and others about the upcoming weekend.

“I think everybody would expect ‘how much is it [going to bring]’, same for us. We will have to see.

“For us, the most important thing is that we go back racing because we have not over the last events. It was very difficult to keep up with the midfield, and whatever it’s going to bring, I think going racing is the most important thing for everyone.

“We need to see what they bring, and there are several steps, so I think the period that we had now with no upgrades for very long is now over.

“So, it looks good for the future, and we are just all looking forward to Budapest and see what we have.”

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Team principal and managing technical partner, Adrian Newey, has been leading the design team on planned upgrades to the current Aston Martin challenger, with the team looking to bring a chassis update for both drivers if they can at the Hungaroring.

Alongside that, power unit partner Honda is also looking ahead to introducing an update of its own, though that is not due until the next race, coming after the summer break at Zandvoort.

Hinting at the detail of the coming changes, Krack confirmed the team has reached its goals in development for this package.

“It’s quite extensive,” he said. “The main things are obviously aerodynamic and weight, and to achieve that you have to do a lot of things, and everything has been achieved that we wanted.

“Again, it’s part of a large package that we will get, and we’re counting the days.”

Additional reporting by Thomas Maher

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