The Silverstone-based outfit began 2023 as Red Bull’s main challenger, with Fernando Alonso rolling off five podium finishes from the first six races. He also had a shot at winning the Monaco Grand Prix.
But since the midpoint of the season, Aston Martin’s form has fallen back, and Alonso has had just one podium – second place in the Dutch GP – in the last eight races.
It has also slipped back to fourth in the constructors’ championship and now runs the risk of falling to fifth, behind the resurgent McLaren squad, if it does not lift its performance over the rest of the year.
Team principal Mike Krack is aware of the need for things to improve, as he acknowledged it would be bad for morale if the team ended the year on the back foot.
Asked if it was critical Aston Martin did not see out 2023 drifting backwards, Krack said: “Yeah, I 100%. agree. This is very important. It's a bit of the opposite of last year.
“If you have a good start, and then others are overtaking you, it is much more difficult for morale than if you do it vice versa. And that is something that, for us, it's very, very important to turn the trend around.
“Whatever that leads to finally we have to see, but this trend has to be turned.”
Krack thinks Aston Martin’s drop-off in results through the season is a consequence of the team failing to keep up with its rival in F1’s development race.
It thinks squads like Ferrari, Mercedes and McLaren have simply made bigger gains with improvements to effectively leapfrog it in the battle behind Red Bull.
That is why the AMR23 no longer looks as competitive in certain corners as it did at the beginning of the season – when it even looked on par with Red Bull’s RB19 through some turns.
Krack added: “We need to look in terms of ranking, but others had more problems at that time than we had.
“So, it's something that we need to work on for the races to come. You need to have a car that works everywhere. And this we are not having at the moment.”
