Lance Stroll assured during the last test at the Losail circuit that the modifications made to the car did not benefit him. Especially since it seemed like the rear of the car was less stable, or at least that was the feeling. Furthermore, the Canadian could not avoid his frustration after being eliminated, once again, in Q1, a behavior which led to a reprimand from the FIA.

Mike Krack, boss of the Aston Martin team, recognized Stroll’s difficulties in this second part of the season and indicated that it was necessary to speak with his driver to try to resolve these problems. Although he admitted that he did not yet have all the details, he confessed that he was aware that “lost a bit of competitiveness and that’s something we need to understand“.

“We have suspicions and indications, and I think that’s what Lance is referring to. But then we have to make the corresponding changes and see if it is confirmed, because “If you improve that, it improves too.” Krack analyzed in the statements collected by Autosport.

Stroll admitted on occasion that there were some features in the handling of the AMR23 that he was not entirely comfortable with. “There are always things in every car, but I think when the car was really good this year, I was very happy with it. It’s just that recently it’s been a little more difficult,” he commented after the new update that Aston Martin is trying to achieve to maintain its level of competitiveness.

However, he considered that this “new philosophy, of making aerodynamic improvements, didn’t take us the step forward we expected“. “So we’re trying to understand it and add a few things to the car during the season to fix it and improve the characteristics that we had at the start of the season, when the car was more predictable, easier to drive and more lenient. I think we lost some of it,” he admitted.

Stroll insisted on his idea. “It’s about understanding why. In theory you want the car to go faster, I think we added downforce but we made the car harder to drive,” he added.

While Stroll blames his problems on changes to the car, Alonso appears to have issues in this regard and the rest of the season for both is very different. The Spaniard maximizes the potential of the car, unlike Stroll, who is having a very discreet season and the inequality between the two points is appalling. However, Krack did not want to compare and maintains that he hopes to learn from the problems as a team to take a step forward.

“I think at the end of the day, you don’t usually go into the finer details in terms of understanding. In our case, when you’re struggling, you usually learn more and go into a lot more detail than if you were fine. It’s normal. I think we will have a great learning exercise in this sense,” commented Krack in conclusion.