Following a difficult start to the season, Aston Martin brought a significant upgrade to the Spanish Grand Prix that drew comparisons to the concept used by Red Bull on its RB18 car.
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The team has since enjoyed an upswing in form, scoring points in each of the last three races and recording a best result of sixth place in Azerbaijan courtesy of Sebastian Vettel.
But Aston Martin F1 boss Mike Krack warned the team cannot become “overambitious”, given the update initially struggled to make much of an impact in Spain before then proving more competitive on the street circuits in Monaco, Azerbaijan and Canada.
In a bid to combat some of the weaknesses seen with the new package in Barcelona, further updates are planned for the British Grand Prix in a further boost to Vettel and team-mate Lance Stroll’s hopes.
“We had that [upgrade] for Barcelona, but you will recall in Barcelona that we were also lacking pace, very clearly, and the car has not changed,” said Krack.
“We have a combination of a car that is certainly better, but also tracks that helped us be a bit more competitive than we maybe would have been had there been three races at a Barcelona-like track.
“We need to keep our feet on the ground. We know that we need to bring updates for these kind of tracks that are now coming, and that is also why we elected to do it like that.
“We have to update the car to be able to stay competitive, because we know also everyone will have updates at Silverstone.”
Asked if Silverstone would be a more difficult weekend for Aston Martin given the similarities to Barcelona, Krack replied: “If we would not update the car, yes.
“But as I said, we will [bring updates] and then it depends obviously on how much do we improve compared to how others are improving.
“We worked our [plans], we have found a little bit bigger packages, smaller packages, and according to how the races are coming, identifying also the weaknesses of the car in Barcelona.”
The Barcelona concept on the AMR22 was designed in parallel with the launch-spec car, but has ultimately offered the team a much wider set-up window.
It has lifted Aston Martin from languishing at the foot of the constructors’ championship to regularly fighting for points and Q3 berths, encouraging the team to keep developing the 2022 car.
“You have to look at how tight the midfield is, you don’t need a big step to make up a lot of positions,” Krack said.
“This was a little bit different in the past, when you had really low positions and there were big differences between the cars. But in Baku, I think in FP3, between P5 and P15 there was 0.4-something seconds.
“If you manage to be in front of that group, the points that you score are much, much more than if you lack those two, three-tenths that you need for it.
“So that is also why we cannot just say we look at the new car. We have to get to the front of this group, and then it is easier to fight for points because we can’t terminate a year where we started it.”
