Aston Martin thankful Alonso and Stroll didn’t “slam us down”

Aston Martin group principal Mike Krack has expressed his gratitude in direction of his drivers after they largely shunned hitting out at their automobile’s lack of efficiency within the media.

2024 was a noticeably poorer season for the Silverstone-based squad after a 2023 marketing campaign when Fernando Alonso was an everyday podium contender.

Aston Martin’s greatest outcome final 12 months was Alonso’s fifth-place end in Saudi Arabia. The Spaniard’s 70 factors and team-mate Lance Stroll’s tally of 24 sufficed to safe fifth place within the constructors’ championship – albeit a world away from fourth-placed Mercedes’s complete of 468 factors.

Revealing his spotlight of the 12 months, Krack mentioned he was thrilled that his drivers have remained considerably optimistic regardless of their struggles.

“The spotlight is for me the drivers and the way they’ve coped with this, how they’ve caught to the group,” Krack instructed Autosport in an end-of-season interview.

“It could be really easy for them to go within the media and slam us down, as a result of for them it is probably the most troublesome. Week in, week out, they drive it and so they can’t change the automobile. They should drive it and so they have all of the microphones in entrance of them. They usually have all the time caught with the group. So, for me, that’s truly an enormous spotlight.”

Stroll urged again in June that “it is wonderful to see how far” the group has come because the Racing Level period and he’s “undoubtedly right here for the longer term”.

Fernando Alonso, Aston Martin AMR24

Photograph by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Pictures

Alonso particularly has a historical past of calling his group out for dangerous efficiency, not least when with McLaren throughout its ill-fated partnership with Honda final decade.

Talking in September final 12 months, the two-time champion mentioned: “As a group, we may settle for not being within the high 4 battle – they’re high groups and they’re nicely in entrance of us. However now to be behind Williams, behind Haas, behind [RB], I believe we have to increase the bar somewhat bit.”

Nonetheless, the two-time world champion can be proving real looking.

“In System 1 there usually are not many miracles – it’s good to be affected person,” he identified. As a consequence, he’s discovering solace within the promise of higher days to come back with the 2026 technical regulatory overhaul.