Aston Martin team boss Mike Krack insists that his squad is not getting carried away with its impressive display at the season-opening race in Bahrain last weekend.
Fernando Alonso took a podium finish in his debut for the team, with the AMR23 catching the eye of rivals from the first day of pre-season testing.
Despite its impressive display, it was still competing off the level set by Red Bull, who dominated the grand prix.
Krack, who took over the Aston Martin Team Principal role last year, says that besting the defending champions isn’t on its radar.
“We wanted to make a step forwards. We did not say we want to beat Red Bull,” he said.
“Again, let’s keep the feet on the ground, let’s work hard.
“It could be that in Jeddah, we’re maybe fourth or fifth or sixth in terms of teams’ ranking. I think let’s enjoy today, and we continue to see how it goes on.”
Aston Martin showed strong form throughout the latter stages of the 2022 campaign, scoring several top 10 finishes in the final races.
However, this came after a slow start to the season, and it ended the standings seventh, tied on points with Alfa Romeo.
But as it has made a visible step forward for the start of 2023, Krack has highlighted the importance of starting the year with a strong car in the current cost cap era.
“You remember that I always said in a cost cap environment, you need to start with a good baseline,” he said.
“Because you cannot afford to spend what you have available on just on developing. I think this is something that is also why we went aggressive in the targets that we had for that car.
“Obviously it’s not always easy to achieve, but our team has managed to achieve great things there, and it’s much, much easier to develop from this base than to develop from the base we had last year.”
