New Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack says he believes the outfit are on target with their plan to be Formula 1 title contenders by 2025.
The 49-year-old, formerly boss of BMW Motorsport, has been appointed by Aston Martin’s ambitious owner, the Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll.
“We have everything we need but we need to make the right decisions,” said Krack.
“It doesn’t come by itself. It is hard work over many days, weeks and months.”
He has widespread experience in motorsport engineering and management, having been a race engineer at the BMW Sauber team in Formula 1 in the 2000s, before moving on to senior management roles at the racing departments of Porsche and BMW.
Aston Martin is the second team in recent years to set themselves a five-year plan towards competitiveness – but Krack believes they can succeed where Alpine, formerly Renault, have failed to progress.
“I agree that five-year plans do not always come to success,” he said. “There can only be one winner. And very often you have a disruption – like this year with a new set of regulations – where you have to readjust.
“But on the other hand, what is a little bit different to the team you have mentioned [Alpine] is we aren’t an OEM [major car manufacturer].
“We are a lean management structure and we can decide very quickly and we are very flexible. We have big possibilities and we have quick decision path. This is an asset not everyone has.
“Obviously you cannot plan success, but you have to put everything in place to achieve it.”
The team Krack now leads under Stroll and group chief executive officer Martin Whitmarsh became Aston Martin last year. It was renamed by Stroll after he took over the historic road-car business in 2020 following his acquisition of the former Force India F1 team in 2018 after its collapse into administration.
Through the team’s various guises since its founding as Jordan in 1991, they have formed a reputation for punching above their weight.
Why is Krack at Aston Martin?
Krack said part of the appeal in taking the job, other than a chance to run a team in motorsport’s top category, was because he saw similarities with his time at Sauber – and equally had learned lessons as to what to avoid.
Sauber, a privately owned team with a reputation for being perennial midfielders, was taken over by BMW in 2006, and the company set a target of competing for the title in 2009.
It famously sacrificed a possibility to push for the championship in 2008, when Robert Kubica was leading the points table after winning the Canadian Grand Prix in June, by stopping development on that car so it could focus on rule changes coming in the following year.
BMW’s 2009 car was uncompetitive, and the company pulled out of F1 at the end of the season.
“I sense a little bit the situation I had with Sauber,” Krack said. “We were in a similar situation where at times we were clearly over-performing to our capabilities and then we had a big partner coming in where you all of a sudden had possibilities you never had before. We have something similar here.”
He added: “BMW also had a five-year plan and it was handled in a very corporate manner, which we must avoid at any cost here.”
Foundations for ambition
Aston Martin are building a new factory at their base at Silverstone, which is due to be finished early in 2023.
Krack echoed Stroll in saying it would be “state of the art”, adding: “We will have all the possibilities and facilities you need to be successful then.”
The Luxembourger’s appointment is in the vein of McLaren’s decision to bring in former Porsche Motorsport boss Andreas Seidl as their team principal in 2019.
Seidl has since made a significant impact and is widely respected within F1, while McLaren has made conspicuous progress under his leadership.
Krack, a former colleague of the German, characterised his management style as “bringing people together to give them trust to enable them, and I can manage to form teams that work well together”.
And he said he had “no big list of names I want to bring in” from his former companies.
“It is more important to see what structure we have here,” Krack said. “There are really good people here. It is more like if we need to fill a role and we know someone from my network, I will make a suggestion and push to have the right people in. But it is not at all like I would like to get people exchanged for people I know, not at all.”
Aston Martin’s current driver line-up is four-time champion Sebastian Vettel, and Lance Stroll, son of Lawrence.
Vettel’s contract runs out at the end of this season and Krack, who worked with Vettel at BMW Sauber in 2006, said: “It is clear a guy like Sebastian does not want to to be 15th or or 12th or eighth. It is our task to deliver a performing structure.
“Sebastian is a clever guy. He will not just be focusing on this year’s car but [on whether] he sees the potential. And if we can offer him this we have a chance to keep him for longer.
“I have not spoken to him about it. It is our task to deliver the right package and then Sebastian will [want to] stay and other drivers would like to join.”
