Aston Martin hit reverse gear on some recent car upgrades at the Mexican GP.
The F1 team, which has struggled to introduce upgrades this season that convert into improved pace, introduced a major new package in Austin just over a week ago.
The new parts failed to move Aston Martin forwards - and team boss Mike Krack now admits that the Silverstone based outfit even backtracked on some aspects of the Austin-spec package in Mexico last weekend.
"We are pushing, but so are the other nine teams," he told DAZN. "We have to do better to build cars that have improvements and work straight away. It’s something we have to improve on.
"We have to take a step forward with next year’s car and start better than we have done this season."
Krack admits Aston Martin experimented with the Austin-spec package in Mexico.
"On Friday we had two different aerodynamic configurations - one in the morning and one in the afternoon, to try to understand all the differences," he said. "And the truth is that we did not keep all of the parts that we had put on the car in Austin.
"We kept some," Krack added, "but with others we have had to go back."
He admits that Austin was basically the last car upgrade of 2024.
"More improvements?" he told DAZN. "We have to analyse and see what we can do. There is also the budget cap, and we don’t want to be distracted from next year’s car either.
"It’s a difficult balance," Krack admits. "Let’s see what we have, what we can do and what development there is for next year’s car and if it can be applied to this year’s car to maximise it at the end of the season."