Aston Martin races to finish Hungary upgrades but Krack warns spare parts are scarce

Aston Martin is pushing its factory staff to the limit to complete a significant aerodynamic upgrade package ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix, though chief trackside officer Mike Krack has cautioned that spare parts could be in short supply when the cars are assembled.

Krack described the effort as a “big undertaking”, telling reporters that while he was confident both cars would be ready to race, the team was unlikely to have a full complement of backup components. “I don’t think we will have five spares of each, to be honest,” he said.

The Silverstone-based outfit has endured one of the most difficult starts to a season in its recent history. Reliability problems stemming from the interface between the Honda power unit and the AMR26 chassis — including vibration issues and battery failures — forced the team to focus its resources on fixing faults rather than pursuing performance gains. As a result, Aston Martin deliberately held back any aerodynamic development until the final race before the summer break, a decision that has left it roughly a second per lap adrift of Cadillac in qualifying.

The sole points finish of the campaign so far came at Monaco, where Fernando Alonso claimed a single point after both Nico Hülkenberg and Sergio Pérez received time penalties that dropped them out of the top ten.

Krack acknowledged that whether the team had enough parts to equip both cars fully was “the one million dollar question”, but said contingency plans were already in place to ensure the upgrade programme could proceed even if individual components failed to arrive in time. “You cannot make yourself dependent on one part missing and then you cannot do it,” he said. “There are plans in place — what if we don’t have that, can we run this?”

Despite the optimism around finally having new aero parts to evaluate, Krack was careful to temper expectations about the performance step the upgrades would deliver. Aston Martin currently sits well behind not only the frontrunners but also the midfield pack, and Krack stressed the team’s immediate priority was simply getting the cars to the grid in Hungary with the new specification intact.

“I think we need to be careful with expectations,” he said. “We are quite far away from the front, but also from the midfield. So I think we have to put the car on the ground in Hungary first.”