{"id":28593,"date":"2024-12-16T09:37:50","date_gmt":"2024-12-16T14:37:50","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/?p=28593"},"modified":"2024-12-16T09:42:05","modified_gmt":"2024-12-16T14:42:05","slug":"not-much-difference-between-alonso-and-stroll-says-mike-krack","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2024\/12\/16\/not-much-difference-between-alonso-and-stroll-says-mike-krack\/","title":{"rendered":"&#8220;Not much difference&#8221; between Alonso and Stroll, says Mike Krack"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>There isn&#8217;t much to separate <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2024\/12\/05\/alonso-i-would-not-receive-the-same-benefit-as-george\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Fernando Alonso<\/a> and Lance Stroll, argues Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack. According to Krack, the AMR24&#8217;s poor drivability was the biggest limiting factor this season.<\/p>\n<h2>Mike Krack: Alonso and Stroll evenly matched<\/h2>\n<p>When Aston Martin were capable of podiums at the beginning of 2023, it was Fernando Alonso who capitalised.<\/p>\n<p>The Spaniard secured 6 podiums in the first 8 races, catapulting Aston Martin into knew heights at the front of the field.<\/p>\n<p>Even when Aston fell down the pecking order, Alonso still managed to claim podiums in Zandvoort and Brazil &#8211; finishing 4th in the drivers standings.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2024\/11\/04\/lance-stroll-suspects-brake-failure-caused-brazil-spin\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Lance Stroll<\/a> failed to finish in the top 3 at any stage &#8211; ending the season over 100 points behind Alonso.<\/p>\n<p>Across this year&#8217;s campaign, there has also been a large deficit between the Aston Martin duo.<\/p>\n<p>However, Mike Krack believes his drivers are quite close in terms of ability:<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;The car is super-difficult to drive,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/es.motorsport.com\/f1\/news\/krack-diferencia-stroll-alonso\/10682776\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">es.motorsport<\/a> quotes him as saying <\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;I\u2019ll give you an example. If Lewis hadn\u2019t hit the bollard in Abu Dhabi [qualifying], we would have been out in Q1 [with Alonso].<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;Sometimes. it\u2019s very small margins that make the difference.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;We saw Lance do a brilliant sector 2 on used tyres, quicker than Fernando, so it really is sometimes in the wrong place at the wrong time.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;I think that, in general, there is not that much difference between the two<\/em>.<\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;We look at it objectively and yes, we have a difference throughout the season. We try to analyse it and find it.<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;But I think that the car is so complicated to drive that you can never predict anything&#8230;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><em>&#8220;But I don&#8217;t want to start with questions about the drivers, because the car we gave the drivers was not good enough.&#8221;<\/em><\/p>\n<p><a id=\"8QKz1awgRMhsAIe_INEJPw\" class=\"gie-single\" style=\"color: #a7a7a7; text-decoration: none; font-weight: normal !important; border: none; display: inline-block;\" href=\"http:\/\/www.gettyimages.com\/detail\/2188360933\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Embed from Getty Images<\/a><script>window.gie=window.gie||function(c){(gie.q=gie.q||[]).push(c)};gie(function(){gie.widgets.load({id:'8QKz1awgRMhsAIe_INEJPw',sig:'_SyshQ-H0Jr0KEWakWoR4PF3VrK4JtKJ27yqJsyaBZA=',w:'594px',h:'396px',items:'2188360933',caption: true ,tld:'com',is360: false })});<\/script><script src='\/\/embed-cdn.gettyimages.com\/widgets.js' charset='utf-8' async><\/script><\/p>\n<h4>Stroll&#8217;s position remains secure<\/h4>\n<p>These comments in defence of Lance Stroll are not necessarily something new from the Aston Martin team principal.<\/p>\n<p>Even at the heights of Stroll&#8217;s struggles in 2024, Mike Krack made sure to shield the Canadian driver from external criticism.<\/p>\n<p>Following his crash in Singapore qualifying, Krack described the accident as evidence of the 26-year-old&#8217;s commitment to Formula 1.<\/p>\n<p>In some ways, <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2024\/11\/12\/f1-news-aston-martin-director-dan-fallows-leaves-role-for-newey\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Aston Martin&#8217;s lack of competitiveness<\/a> has limited public discourse on the team&#8217;s driver line-up.<\/p>\n<p>However, even a surface-level analysis of the British outfit shows there was a clear difference in output between the two sides of the garage.<\/p>\n<p>Fernando Alonso finished this year in 9th overall &#8211; &#8216;best of the rest&#8217; outside of the top four teams.<\/p>\n<p>Meanwhile, Stroll finished in 12th place &#8211; 54 points behind his teammate.<\/p>\n<p>Without the team&#8217;s relatively strong start to the season, the likes of Haas and <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2024\/12\/16\/franco-colapinto-briatore-leaves-door-open-for-2026-alpine-move\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Alpine<\/a> would have been within striking distance in the standings.<\/p>\n<p>Looking ahead to next year, Aston Martin could also be relatively anonymous in the midfield.<\/p>\n<p>Their inability to make tangible progress since 2023 puts them in an awkward position until the regulations change in 2026.<\/p>\n<p>With that said, the issue of Lance Stroll&#8217;s performance will become inevitably return as a significant talking point if the Silverstone-based team ever return to the front.<\/p>\n<p>If Aston Martin want to maximise their potential, they cannot rely on one driver to score the majority of their points.<\/p>\n<p>This is especially true in the case of <a href=\"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/2024\/09\/12\/fernando-alonso-i-will-be-driving-in-2026-and-beyond\/\" target=\"_blank\" target=\"_self\">Alonso, who is in the final stretch of his F1 career<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Earlier in the season, there was speculation that Yuki Tsunoda could be an option for the team in 2026. Honda&#8217;s involvement would certainly help to facilitate such a move.<\/p>\n<p>Still, at least for now, there is now evidence to suggest that Mike Krack &#8211; or anyone else at Aston Martin &#8211; is ready to publicly criticise Stroll&#8217;s results.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>There isn&#8217;t much to separate Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll, argues Aston Martin team principal Mike Krack. According to Krack, the AMR24&#8217;s poor drivability was the biggest limiting factor this season. Mike Krack: Alonso and Stroll evenly matched When Aston Martin were capable of podiums at the beginning of 2023, it was Fernando Alonso who [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4927,"featured_media":28597,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"no","_lmt_disable":"","sfio_featured_image":false,"sfio_embed_code":"","_ef_editorial_meta_date_first-draft-date":"","_ef_editorial_meta_paragraph_assignment":"","_ef_editorial_meta_checkbox_needs-photo":"","_ef_editorial_meta_number_word-count":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[4,3],"tags":[2220,1566,465],"class_list":["post-28593","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-formula-1","category-news","tag-2024-formula-1-season","tag-aston-martin","tag-f1-news"],"modified_by":"Jaden Diaz-Ndisang","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28593","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4927"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=28593"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28593\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":28602,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/28593\/revisions\/28602"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/28597"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=28593"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=28593"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lastwordonsports.com\/motorsports\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=28593"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}