Mike Krack and Tom McCullough credits the work done by Sebastian Vettel for Aston Martin to help it be where it is now.
It was an unfortunate scenario where Vettel didn’t get to drive a car which he helped to be developed enough to be on the podium. Towards the end of his stint, the car started to show some performance and it eventually delivered well in F1 2023.
The fun of the podiums was enjoyed by Fernando Alonso eventually. And Aston Martin duly give credit to Vettel for his aide. At the start of the season, Krack did so and by the end of the year, even with the slip in results in between, he maintained his statement.
“I said at the beginning of the year that he has his merits here, he brought a lot to the team before my arrival,” said Krack to media. “It was not only input to the car but also the input in working methods, in the way we do things but I think there is some merit.”
Aston Martin performance director McCullough further elaborates on what made Vettel make that difference. The German’s experience of racing with Red Bull and Ferrari came in handy eventually and he surely aided the F1 team wherever possible.
He compares Vettel’s work to that with Rubens Barrichello in Williams, where the British outfit benefitted from his work after his departure. “When he joined us, he’d come from two championship-winning teams,” said McCullough. “At that time he brought a lot of small details. He is a relentless worker as well.
“We often say the driver’s the best sensor in the car, and a lot of the development, you’ve got a wind tunnel, you’ve got simulators, offline simulations, CFD, but a driver whose backside’s connected to the car well can say ‘this is the phase of these kind of corners that I know we’re struggling maybe more than others’. And then that allows you to go dig into the data.
“For sure, we didn’t give him a good enough car over the two years he was here. By the end of his second year, we were making progress. But I felt for him that he’s not really got any of the benefit of this year’s car. Over the years that often happens. I’ve been involved with that process myself in the past.
“At Williams, when we had Rubens Barrichello driving for us, he put so much work in during the 2010 and ’11 seasons, as far as to say ‘this is what you need to do, this what you should be doing’ on so many areas of the car. The 2012 car, which unfortunately he didn’t end up driving, was the result of a lot of the hard work he’d done. So that is very much the case.”
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