Krack started working at Aston Martin this week after ending his time at BMW , his previous company.
The team is undergoing a senior management shake-up at the same time as they build a new campus next to their factory.
Krack worked closely with Sebastian Vettel when the driver came to F1 with BMW Sauber as test and reserve driver in 2006 and therefore knows him well. The four-time champion currently only has one year left on his contract with the team.
“It’s clear that a guy like Sebastian, a four-time world champion, doesn’t want to be 15th or 12th or 8th,” Krack said. “That’s clear. Our task is to give him a car that works, or let’s say a structure that works, because I think Sebastian is a smart guy.”
“So he’s not just going to focus on this year’s car or whatever, but he’s going to focus more on what’s going on and whether he sees the potential.
“So if we can offer him that, I think we have a chance to keep him longer.”
“To be honest, I haven’t talked to him about it. That’s something that will have to come at some point, obviously.”
“But overall it’s our job to give him the right package, and then Sebastian will stay and other drivers will want to join us.”
Krack insisted that Vettel is a great asset to Aston Martin.
“Let’s put it this way: Sebastian, first of all, is a very nice guy,” he explained. “So he manages to rally the team around him, not being nice all the time, but being respectful. That’s an ethic that I share a lot of, so that’s also one of the reasons why I think we get along very well. right”.
“But then compared to the last time I met him, he’s now a four-time champion, he’s got a lot of experience. And he’s a smart guy.”
“That’s why he also manages to combine that experience by channeling it in the right way, and not just saying ‘in the past I had this or that’, but he knows exactly what he needs to go faster”
“So from that point of view, it’s great to have him, because he can also guide us as a team in our development.”
Mike Krack, director de Aston Martin F1
Krack revealed that, despite their past relationship, he did not speak to Vettel before accepting the Aston Martin offer, in part because he was bound by confidentiality in negotiations with the team’s management.
“I haven’t been in contact with Seb before because I didn’t want to be biased with just one opinion, or whatever,” he said.
“And also, I have to say that those negotiations are very, very confidential. You shouldn’t talk to anyone about these things when you’re negotiating.”
“And the companies are very, very strict about that because otherwise you immediately have what we see in football, that all these rumors come out about transfers or players going here or there.
“So from that point of view, I relied strictly on what we had agreed to in terms of confidentiality.”
He added: “Deep down I don’t know what happened between Seb and the team about me. Maybe they asked him or maybe they didn’t. I can’t comment on that. The fact is that I hadn’t talked to Sebastian before, or at least not about this matter”.
Krack said that since taking over he has already been able to rekindle his relationship with the pilot.
“When Sebastian was in Turkey for the first time in the third car, I was his race engineer. So that obviously created a special bond between me and him. Also, last week he said to me: ‘Do you remember Istanbul?’ We have a very good relationship.”
“We haven’t been in that much contact in the years since I left F1. But when we met again, it was like we had seen each other the day before. So it was really, really good to catch up.”
“Now we have a lot of stories to exchange, not only about racing, but also about family, children and things like that. But the talks I’m having with him always extend from what we lived through in the past.”
“So we were very, very close in the past, and I have a feeling we’ve been very close now again.”
