Given how poor Aston Martin’s 2022 season has been, it would be easy to imagine that team owner and father of Lance Stroll, Lawrence Stroll, would be ready to make a number of changes at the team; however, this doesn’t seem to be the case.
The Silverstone-based team’s boss Mike Krack has told the BBC that Stroll is actually “not over-pressurising”, despite the side being ninth in the Constructors’ Championship.
Aston Martin have failed to build a car capable of battling for points consistently, with Sebastian Vettel and Stroll currently sitting P13 and P18 in the Drivers’ Championship.
Poor qualifying performances and reliability woes have made the season too difficult for the British side to battle with the likes of Alpine and McLaren, but there are reasons to be optimistic going forward.
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The retiring Vettel will, of course, be replaced by double World Champion Fernando Alonso, who many have labelled for being like-minded to the team’s owner.
The Spaniard won’t be an easy character to work with; however, he will help the team take the “next-step”.
The team will also be able to take full advantage of former Red Bull employee Dan Fallows, who was signed in January, as he’ll be able to take a leading role in designing the team’s 2023 challenger.
A lot has changed since Stroll bought the team from Vijay Mallya in 2019, whilst they were known as Force India.
They’ve undergone name changes, a merge with Aston Martin and the huge 2022 regulation overhaul.
Stroll has put an incredible amount of money into the team, with Krack being more than aware that the team must deliver the owner with results following his hefty investment.
“The financial means he has put into this team give him the right to be demanding. But he is not over-pressurising us,” Krack said.
“He is around once a week or something like that, and wants to know what is going on, what are the next steps, why have we performed the way we did, what do we do next, and what is our strategy? And then after two hours he has other things to do. It is not that he comes in and decides every single item, not at all.
“It is justified to give your chairman an update every week at least. There are also phone calls in between but they are more like catch-ups.
“But, bottom line, I admire his patience, honestly,” he added.
“Because success has not come the way he wanted it from the beginning, and the patience he has shown shows he is realistic and understands what he is doing.”
Krack has had to manage not only the team since taking on his role at the start of this season, but also the astronomical injection of cash.
The 50-year-old gave an insight on how he deals with the surge of money, where he admitted that knowing when to “stop” is the hardest part.
“When you have a cash injection, the thinking normally is: ‘We want to do more and more and more’,” Krack added.
“And sometimes the difficult bit is to say: ‘Stop, we wait with this, and we focus only on this point until we have solved it.’ The difficult bit is not to say: ‘Yes we do it.’
“There is always this saying – I throw you three balls, how many will you catch? Probably none. But if I throw one, there is a high chance you catch it.
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“And this is the thing – focus on one item, and take the next item when one is done.
“We need to deliver the improvements. And at the end of year four, or in the middle of year five, if you can see clear progress, it is not important if you have won three races or two races or 10.
“The most important is you see the path and then you have to adjust along the way,” Krack concluded.