Sebastian Vettel returned behind the wheel of his car in Melbourne after missing the first two races of the season after testing positive for COVID-19 , with Nico Hulkenberg replacing him in both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
Four-time world champion Vettel hit the wall in FP3 , compromising his qualifying session. His teammate, Lance Stroll, also had a minor accident in the third free practice session.
Krack insists the incidents were not because the German driver had missed the previous two races, saying it is the team that must take responsibility for the car’s behaviour.
“I’m happy that Seb is okay, after all these incidents,” Krack said. “But I think if someone like him, who is a four-time world champion, has problems like he did over the weekend, it’s not because he doesn’t know how to drive the car.
“This is something that we need to look at, what car do we provide him and what comments does he make about the car. Because you will agree with me that it is not normal for him to be as ‘out of the game’ as he has been this weekend.
“And I don’t think that’s related to him missing two races. I mean, he’s won several times in Melbourne. He knows how to drive here and he’s already had some tests with the car.
“I think it would be very easy to say, ‘Oh, he wasn’t here for two weekends and that’s because of that.’ With a driver of this level, we really need to check what tools we’re giving him.
Krack says Aston Martin knows why it hasn’t been competitive at the start of the season, with the team sitting 10th in the championship, the only outfit yet to score a single point in 2022.
“In Formula 1, if you’re not performing, it’s usually quite easy to identify why. The reasons why some teams are performing and others are not is down to the aerodynamics and the weight of the car at the moment.
“So as we make progress on the weight side, we continue to struggle with aerodynamics. So this is something we really need to focus on. I don’t want to go into detail, but performance weaknesses are normally in that area and in this case , for us, it’s the same, then everything becomes much more difficult”.
“So the better aero you have, the easier everything becomes, the drivers are happy and the results are better, so everything becomes easier. If it doesn’t, you start to doubt absolutely everything.”
Asked if the team had gone the wrong way in developing the AMR22, he said: “I think we made a decision about the concept at a certain point and also about how the car should be worked on.
“If you look at the issues that we’re having with regards to porpoising , like other teams are having, that’s basically what’s holding us back. We’re doing it, but to exploit our full potential we have to get past that barrier, so That doesn’t allow us to exploit the progress the guys have made.”
“Then it’s also quite frustrating to know that you’ve made progress and you can’t exploit it,” Mike Krack concluded.
