The vast differences Aston Martin's boss had to face after his 14-year F1 hiatus

He’s always there. “I don’t know how, no matter whatever day, whatever time I come to the factory. Maybe ask him how he does it.” Aston Martin ambassador Pedro de la Rosa gives GP Racing his final piece of advice just as Mike Krack appears on the roof terrace of the sumptuous Aston ‘motorhome’ parked in Monaco harbour.

He might be one of a new breed of team bosses – those with an engineering background – but he describes himself as one of the “dinosaurs” on account of having been in and around F1 for over two decades. It’s Friday morning and he’s arrived in Monte Carlo the night before, having spent a couple of days at the factory between two back-to-back races. Lawrence Stroll’s plan to conquer the world isn’t going to execute itself – and Krack is one of those who never count the hours at work.

As an engineer, he’s more comfortable in the garage than facing the media, but he seems to have a clear strategy for communicating with the outside world. With colourful personalities such as Stroll Sr and Fernando Alonso around, it’s probably a must for Aston to have someone who can be counted upon to remain calm and level-headed, and Krack fits the bill perfectly. He’ll remind you there’s still a long way to go after the podiums and, when you draw his attention to drops in his team’s performance, he’ll point out that progress in F1 is never linear. And he’ll defend his drivers no matter what – even if the cynics will say it’s only because one of them is a two-time world champion and the other is his boss’s son.

You’ll never see him too excited or too angry and, although he’s the third-longest-serving team principal in F1, little is known about the man and what makes him tick.

Mike paved his way to the pinnacle of motorsport by phoning Sauber’s technical director Willy Rampf every week for several months until he gave him a job, and then stayed on at Hinwil for almost a decade in the early 2000s, including the years when the Swiss team was taken over by BMW. He left F1 almost at the same time as the German manufacturer to build a successful career in other categories before accepting an offer from Aston to return almost 14 years later, now as a manager rather than an engineer, and in a very different F1.

GP Racing: Mike, do you know exactly how long you were away from Formula 1?

Mike Krack: From December 2008 until March 2022. So 13 years and three months.

Krack sits down with GP Racing for an in-depth chat about all things F1

Photo by: Motorsport Images

GPR: We thought about doing something like “F1 now and then: the Mike Krack edition”, talking about how it’s changed while you’ve been busy doing something else.

MK: It’s actually an interesting subject. Nobody asks about it.

GPR: What if we start with cars?

MK: The regulations have changed a lot in between, so it’s hard to compare. But one of the biggest things is how aerodynamic surfaces have changed. Back then they were either round or square. Now every area is refined and there’s a radius to everything. That comes from the advancement of wind tunnel technology, visualisation techniques and also CFD [Computational Fluid Dynamics] because you can do a lot of geometry work which gives you the detail that maybe 15 years ago you couldn’t even do in terms of measurement and accuracy.

The level of parts today is just unbelievably high in terms of tolerances, weight – and in terms of cost, unfortunately. It’s often underestimated, but you can’t just take a floor, for example, and bolt it on. The amount of quality control you have to do to make sure it does exactly what it is supposed to do is huge. When we did the upgrade in the field at Suzuka, 90% of the work was just checking.

"For an engineer it also requires a different skill set. We were more generalists: we had no idea about tyres, honestly – we knew they were round and black, and that you had to get the temperatures and pressures right. That was about it. When you see the modelling and the expertise in the teams now in terms of tyre engineering, it’s just incredible what’s being done" Mike Krack

And the parts arrive in a completely different state now. In the old days, when the parts came in, there was no curfew and you could hear the grinders all night long – trying to fit everything! Now there are no grinders because everything that comes to the track is pre-checked. That’s a direct consequence of the curfew – you only have so much time to work, so you have to be more prepared. And the repairs... at Imola we basically built a new car in two hours. Without all the preparation we would never have made it in time.

GPR: Technologies.

MK: I think the main driver is computing power. Everything is much more refined and studied. To give you an example, simple deflection tests. You couldn’t really predict what your composite layups were doing dynamically at the time – and that’s standard practice now. You know what happens when you apply a certain load, you know what it’s doing under different temperatures. It’s just deeper. And even things like race strategy.

I used to run an Excel spreadsheet during qualifying with fuel loads, time left and all that, to make sure we followed our run plan. And it did the job. But you had a lot of human intervention. Now it’s all automatic. If there’s a red flag at any point during the session your new run plan is immediately calculated with the software tools we have.

Having risen through the ranks as an engineer, Krack is one of a new breed of F1 team principals making their mark

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

For an engineer, it also requires a different skill set. We were more generalists: we had no idea about tyres, honestly – we knew they were round and black, and that you had to get the temperatures and pressures right. That was about it. When you see the modelling and the expertise in the teams now in terms of tyre engineering, it’s just incredible what’s being done.

Now you have specialists in every area. The travelling team, we were about 25 people. Now we’re a hundred.

GPR: That goes straight to the teams!

MK: When I stopped we were about 400 and we [BMW Sauber] were a big team back then. I think the smallest team now is over 400. The size of the teams has exploded. Also the commercial side. We often talk about the technical side and manufacturing and all that but also, commercially, I think F1 has exploded. We used to have one communications guy, two or three commercial guys touring the guests around. Now there’s a huge experience around the whole thing.

GPR: The last one. The people. Are they the same?

MK: No. This is a completely different generation of people. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying everything was better in the past. Not at all. But it was different. When we were testing or racing, you would get an average of two hours sleep a night over a weekend.

We do 24 races. And people no longer want to do 24 races. One of the first questions during an interview is “How much can I work from home?” It’s a different generation, the whole working environment has changed. For us, it wasn’t even a question of 'am I going to do 24 races or not?' It’s 24 races. Even if it were 30... Yes, we’re the dinosaurs.

GPR: But there are still a lot of people here – one fewer now with Franz Tost’s retirement – who don’t understand why there’s a curfew, because they want to spend all their time at the track. And you’re one of them, aren’t you?

MK: Franz was an extreme example! But yes, I am. On the other hand, you have to accept times are changing. You can see it in everyday life. We’re in a bubble and you have a completely different view of that bubble when you’ve been out of it for 15 years. You can’t be stuck in the past. It was a good time, but it moves on. I’m sure that if we had talked about it then, people would have said that it was a lot more fun when James Hunt was around. But that was a different time too.

Krack delves into how much F1 has changed between his two stints - and laments why there are no more James Hunt characters in the drivers' ranks

Photo by: Rainer W. Schlegelmilch / Motorsport Images

We were talking about this at our team principals’ dinner in Imola. Who is the James Hunt of this generation of drivers? And we quickly realised you can’t be one anymore because of social media. Everything you do is captured, there’s a camera everywhere you go.

GPR: So no James Hunt now?

MK: We’ve identified one that has the potential. Although I’ll keep the name to myself.

GPR: There’s this new trend of engineers becoming team principals. You’re one of them. There’s also Andrea Stella, James Vowles and Ayao Komatsu. What do you think is the reason for that?

MK: If you go back, it was more about commercial survival for all the teams. The owners had to take care of their own companies and spend their own money. Obviously that’s different from spending someone else’s money. I think the whole takeover by Liberty, the cost cap and the high revenues, from TV and sponsorship and the prize money – it’s not so worrying anymore. It’s “how do I get more out of this?” rather than “do I exist?” now.

I think that’s led to the point where you say, “OK, I don’t need to worry about that. I need a commercial department, but not because I have to fight to survive.” The most important thing is to be competitive because that’s how you get more money. And how do you do that? By being fast and getting more of the prize money. And the only way to do that is to perform. And performance is created by engineers. I think that might be one of the reasons.

"I have to be there when it’s difficult. When it’s going well, when we’re successful – you’re not needed. Let them celebrate. I’m emotional too, but I don’t have to tell everyone to celebrate" Mike Krack

GPR: But looking at it from the outside, there seems to be something you all have in common: engineers have this amazing ability to stay calm no matter what happens, and even emotions are seen as one of the performance factors.

MK: Well, that wasn’t part of my interview, to be honest! When I started the job, nobody asked me, “Are you calm and collected?” Engineers can be very emotional.

GPR: When Fernando got on the podium in Brazil last year, passing Sergio Perez on the last lap, during your post-race media session you didn’t appear particularly excited.

MK: What were you expecting then?

GPR: Well, some kind of excitement!

MK: It’s not really a strategy. It’s more about who you are as a person. For myself I see it that way: I have to be there when it’s difficult. When it’s going well, when we’re successful – you’re not needed. Let them celebrate. I’m emotional too, but I don’t have to tell everyone to celebrate. But if we have a bad result, you have to be there. And that’s more like the human side, where you really have to leave the engineer aside and just ask someone how they feel. At the end of the day, I have a job to do. I don’t have to expose myself to the public or to the media.

The Aston Martin boss was happy to let his team celebrate Alonso's thrilling Brazilian GP podium last year but knows he is needed more in the difficult times

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

GPR: That’s one of the things that’s changed, right? The exposure is different.

MK: Absolutely. And also a very different approach than in the past. Knowledgeable journalism – I feel like it’s also dying, like the dinosaurs. People today are mainly interested in the negative. I was struck in Imola when the first question was: “So your upgrades don’t work?” In those situations you have to stay calm. The media landscape has changed a lot.

You have to manage it because it’s very influential. Look at the Christian Horner story. Just in general, when you have accusations, when they’re in the air, the accused has a stamp – he has to prove himself innocent. Even if he does... nobody’s going to write that they were wrong or that they’re sorry. It will just be forgotten, we’ll move on and look for the next negative. Because everything happens so fast these days. Look at the kids – it’s all about 15-second videos. Stories have to be shorter and shorter. Nobody wants to read a three-page article.

GPR: Let’s talk about Fernando Alonso. Surely you were familiar with his image. People say he’s difficult, he’s political and so on. Now that you’ve been working with him for a year and a half, do you understand why?

MK: No.

GPR: Genuinely?

MK: Yes. I don’t understand. For me, it’s quite simple. He’s a straightforward and honest person. And he expects others to be the same. That’s it, really.

GPR: As Pedro says, if you’re straightforward and honest with him, he’ll be straightforward and honest with you. Is that why it took so little time on both occasions to agree a contract?

MK: I think so. It’s not just me, it’s the whole team. Because then [in 2022] I was in Budapest, racing, but there was Martin [Whitmarsh] at home, and Lawrence and Flavio [Briatore, Alonso’s manager] – there was a bigger group involved. Because Fernando’s not the type of guy where these things are easy – with the career he’s had, contracts are usually very complicated. This was pragmatic and straightforward. It’s not a made-up story. The renewal was very simple: he set out what he expected, we set out what we expected – and it was done.

GPR: What about Lance? He’s hard to read from the outside.

MK: I think you don’t know him at all. He’s very nice, approachable, good sense of humour, a hard worker. Bahrain, where he fought his way to get back into the car, showed what a fighter he really is – to get back in after being injured.

Krack's straight-shooting approach with Alonso appears to have allowed to two to click

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

GPR: You mentioned Flavio. Fernando flourished when he was in the team where Flavio was the big boss. Not that we want to compare the two, but do you think it’s important for Fernando to have Lawrence in this team? As a kind of guarantor...

MK: Yes, I think so. Lawrence is very convincing. And Lawrence has not only made words, but facts. He’s a strong man standing there. He says “I’ll do it” and he does it. The campus, the wind tunnel. All of this is only possible if you have someone as determined and ambitious as he is. In the corporate world, people aren’t that brave or entrepreneurial, they’re more worried about their careers than taking risks. Lawrence is just very different.

GPR: You moved into a new factory about a year ago. Have you ever heard the story of the new Berlin airport?

MK: Yes. I know the Berlin airport story very well!

GPR: It took almost 10 years from completion of the building to the official opening. That’s telling, isn’t it? It’s not easy to move a large organisation from one building to another.

"I was in the corporate world before, where you really spent so much time thinking about risk management, doing risk analysis. Here you just go in and then you fix the faults on the way" Mike Krack

MK: What comes into play here [at Aston Martin] is the entrepreneurial determination of Martin and Lawrence. They say: “We’re going in by this date” – and that is non-negotiable. When the leaders set these targets, everyone just works towards them. There’s no talk of “risk management” like in the corporate world. You could spend more time on the question “What can go wrong?” instead of spending your energy just going in. I learned a lot from that, to be honest, because I was in the corporate world before, where you really spent so much time thinking about risk management, doing risk analysis. Here you just go in and then you fix the faults on the way.

That’s the difference between us and Berlin – there it was, “Ah, we cannot go in because this isn’t ready or that isn’t ready.” We just went in and what wasn’t ready had to be ready as soon as possible. That shows the way we do things. When something doesn’t work, we fix it.

GPR: What are the next steps?

MK: Well, the wind tunnel is at the end of the year. The building is finished. We have to move in...

GPR: ...which is important for the 2026 project.

MK: Absolutely. That’s also one of the driving factors. You have to be in to do the 2026 car. We have the shutdown [in August], and after the shutdown we have the middle building, which is more of a social building, with a restaurant, a gym, and the simulator will be in there – that should come online after the shutdown. And then there’s the wind tunnel building at the end of the year. And then full steam ahead into the future.