Release the Kracken

Many big names have failed spectacularly in their quest to become a Formula 1 front-runner, but Aston Martin seems on the right track under Mike Krack. Edd Straw meets him

- Edd Straw

The emergence of Aston Martin as a Formula 1 frontrunner with old-stager Fernando Alonso rolling back the years as its spearhead has been the big story of 2023. It's no exaggeration to say that with Red Bull steamrollering all comers, Aston Martin's sudden rise has saved the season by providing a compellingly fresh storyline.

While headline-grabbing on track and bankrolled by the powerful presence of Canadian billionaire Lawrence Stroll, the British team is led by a softly spoken, silver-haired engineer from Luxembourg named Mike Krack.

With a wealth of experience in motorsport, stretching from race engineering in Formula 3 to heading BMW's motorsport operations and now his first F1 team principalship, he's overseeing Aston Martin's ongoing expansion, relocation to a new purpose-built factory adjacent to its ageing, overpopulated facility across the road at Silverstone and managing its grandiose ambitions to emerge, as Stroll put it, as "one of the greatest Formula 1 teams there will be".

The recent deal to be Honda's works team for F1's next-generation power unit regulations from 2026 is the latest key move. But what's most impressive about Krack is that as well as managing this potentially chaotic period of transition so effectively, he's ensuring that the team doesn't rest on its laurels after an early-season run of podium finishes. It woul be easy to look towards 2026 as the moment Aston Martin breaks through, but instead the talk is of catching all-conquering Red Bull.

Part of the reason for that lies in his experience with the BMW Sauber F1 project of 2006 to 2009, which fell victim to its own corporate conservatism. The target for 2008 was to win a race, which Robert Kubica achieved early-midseason in Canada, at which point the focus switched to the planned title push in 2009 that never came. So Krack knows that if you wait for tomorrow, it often never comes.