At the Singapore Grand Prix, Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel finished sixth and eighth respectively, allowing Aston Martin to jump from ninth to seventh place in the standings ahead of Haas and AlphaTauri.
In Japan Vettel was the protagonist of an excellent race and finished in sixth position after winning a photo finish duel with Fernando Alonso.
The placement of the 4-time world champion allowed Aston Martin to get close to Alfa Romeo in the Constructors with the Swiss team, currently sixth in the standings, now only 7 points away.
Krack acknowledged that the recent results have been a confidence boost for the entire team, but insisted on continuing to play in all areas.
“Trust is not everything, you also need to have a fast car because you don’t do much with trust alone,” he told Motorsport.com when asked about the impact the last two races have had.
“We know where we are with our car, we have made some progress during the year. But in a normal race, we will struggle to finish sixth”.
“We have to be realistic. There are still four to go. If we manage to score there is a chance to gain a position, but the situation can also change quickly. If one of the rival teams gets a significant score, so will we. we could lose a position ”.
“There are still four races left, it’s still long, but I want to underline how in the last 12 races we have scored points on 10 occasions. I think you can see that we are making a good progression.”
At Suzuka, Vettel ended up at the back of the grid after making contact with Alonso immediately after the start and the decision to return to the pits to mount the intermediates when the green flag sanctioned the resumption of the race was the key to his qualitative leap.
Sebastian Vettel, Aston Martin AMR22, spins in the gravel
Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
The only other driver to make this choice was Nicholas Latifi, and, crucially, Vettel came out of the pits right in front of the Canadian’s Williams who finished the race in ninth place.
“We talked about it, we had time to discuss it, how to deal with the situation,” Krack said of the strategy. “And then we decided it together. Ultimately the final decision rests with the driver because we are not able to see all the conditions of the track from the wall”.
“We were ready, and I think this was fundamental as well as being able to get back on track ahead of Latifi. If it hadn’t been so we would not have finished ahead of Fernando. Basically, these two decisions were fundamental.”
Looking forward to the rest of the season, Krack says that while the remaining four races of the year are very different from where the team has done well this year, he remains confident.
“The next races are all very similar in terms of characteristics. They are not tracks like those in Baku, Singapore and Monaco. So for us they will be more difficult than the ones I mentioned.”
“However, we could have rain in Sao Paulo, so there are still opportunities. There is no track coming up where we think we have a terrible weekend ahead of us.”
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