Mike Krack insists Aston Martin will not be hitting reverse gear on the Formula 1 team’s latest major car upgrade.
Technical boss Dan Fallows went into Imola hailing an "aggressive" upgrade for Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll’s cars. And while Stroll scored two points, Alonso qualified and finished an abysmal 19th.
Alonso’s advisor Flavio Briatore surmised that the team appears to be going "backwards".
Team boss Krack admits: "We have homework to do and a lot to work on.
"We certainly see that this year the margins are getting smaller and as soon as you are on the wrong side of these small margins... it’s just so close," he is quoted as saying by Spanish newspapers.
Krack disagrees with critics who suggest Aston Martin has been on a steady decline since the stellar opening part of the 2023 season, in which Alonso completed an impressive series of podiums.
"In Shanghai we were third on the grid," Krack said. "So it hasn’t been very long."
He also says Aston Martin is basically keeping development pace with the team’s main competitors.
"The other teams had the same list of improvements (at Imola). But we are not happy with two points, that’s clear," said the German.
"Expectations are very high from last year. We try to be objective, but it’s difficult. With eight podiums, the bar is very high.
"But we have to understand how those podiums came about. Some teams had not done their homework when we had, and that put us in a position that we were not prepared for as a team. So we have to be realistic."
He therefore denied that the "aggressive" Imola upgrade proved such a failure that Aston Martin should now backtrack to avoid a developmental dead-end.
"No, the update is definitely a step forward," Krack insists. "There is no need to remove it."
However, there’s no denying that Alonso finished second behind Max Verstappen at Monaco last year. Now, the Spaniard is worried that another poor qualifying result after Imola will make racing on the fabled streets of the Principality "torture".
Krack said with a smile: "Yes, Monaco last year was Monaco last year. Now, Monaco this year is Monaco this year. So we will go there and see."