The former BMW Motorsport director has started working alongside Aston Martin in F1 this week, after announcing his hire on January 14.
To begin with, Mike Krack recognized that the Aston Martin facilities are “incredible”. That said, he was also very surprised by the number of staff the structure has, far more numerous than he had in his previous roles at BMW and Porsche .
In addition, the team is currently building a huge brand new campus next to the current Silverstone team base, a place where they hope to build the future successes of the Formula 1 team.
However, Krack explained that his first task will be to meet the team and key personnel.
“Yeah, it’s amazing. I’ve been here a couple of times before I started work. But when you see this huge new building being built, it’s amazing, it has to be.”
“I think I have to face this in a humble way, first I have to come here and understand how this team works. Because we must not forget that ‘Team Silverstone’ is a great team, during all these years they have always performed above of its possibilities.”
“It will be important to find out where the strengths of the team are, and where we can improve, or where we can strengthen some of the weaknesses that exist.”
“Right now I have a lot of conversations with all the staff, with the team leaders and with each department, to understand how they work in general, how the system works.”
“I think it would be silly to come here on day one, try to turn everything around and reorganize them. It’s obvious the team has a good track record, they just need a couple more things to be able to take the next steps.”
“But that is not achieved by turning everything upside down. So I have a conservative plan, I will try to learn as much as possible and then I will incorporate my philosophy and my thinking, it always has to be positive teamwork, because then the motivation comes by itself. alone”.
“Although I’ve seen that people here are extremely motivated, really. So it’s just a matter of channeling all of that properly.”
Mike Krack also wanted to make it clear that at this time he does not plan to hire key personnel from his previous jobs, a strategy that was followed by other directors such as Jost Capito as soon as he landed at Williams.
“I have no plans to sign new people. I don’t have a list of names that I want to bring here. What I have is a network of Porsche, BMW and other places, but the motorsport community that we know is not very big.
“So I think it’s very important to be able to get a sense of who among these people could be a positive asset to this team here and who might not be.”
“An OEM structure is a bit different to an F1 team. And not all structures that work well with an OEM structure work well in an F1 team, because they are quite different.
“So, in my experience, I think there are only a couple of people who are very, very good. But I think it would be a mistake to come here and say that we have to bring this one, this one and this one. It is more important to know what structure we have here. What are the strengths, what are the weaknesses ?”
