Aston Martin ‘needs another step to get back to the competitive car we had’ – Stroll

In brief

Aston Martin needs ‘one more step’ – Stroll

Aston Martin started the season strongly and remained second in the championship for six races. However, he has since dropped to third and has been overtaken by rivals Ferrari and McLaren in each of the last two laps.

Stroll said they “came out of the box very strong” but admitted “it was a bit more difficult the last few events”.

Team principal Mike Krack recently admitted they had realized they hadn’t been getting the best out of their car in recent races and said they had begun to rectify that. But Stroll believes they should also bring more upgrades to their car.

“A lot of the teams caught up, so it’s a lot tighter now,” he said. “We really have to keep pushing and try to take another step in the second half of the season to get back to that really competitive car we had at the start of the year.”

Aston Martin “made some small changes to the car that definitely helped,” Stroll added, “but I think we have to keep pushing because we’re still not as quick as we’d like.”

De Vries back in the cockpit

Nyck de Vries returned to action over the weekend after being kicked out of AlphaTauri last month. He took part in a public demonstration event at the TT Assen circuit to promote a casino, driving a Formula Renault 3.5 car of the type he raced in 2015. Fellow Dutch racer Richard Verschoor was among the others taking part.

Tough NASCAR race for Button and Kobayashi

Jenson Button and Kamui Kobayashi took part in yesterday’s NASCAR race at Indianapolis, making their third and first starts respectively. Both were involved in separate collisions with Ricky Stenhouse Jnr making contact with Kobayashi at turn one and Button at turn 10.

Button finished 28th, Kobayashi was two laps down in 33rd out of 39 cars. Michael McDowell took the win.

Connections

Racing links of motoring interest:

Marko: Verstappen could take pole at Haas (Motorsport-Total – German)

“Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko says Max Verstappen’s performance in wet qualifying at Spa-Francorchamps, where he was eight-tenths of a second quicker, shows he could put an AlphaTauri or Haas on pole position .”

Match Report (Foyt)

“Santino’s saga was a little different. He managed to skate through the car accident with minor damage. At his first pit stop on lap 15, a miscommunication resulted in him running over the front tube, resulting in a stop and go penalty which meant a second pit stop under green. He went a lap down and without another caution period to help get a lap back, he remained a lap down for the race. Finished 23rd.’

Race Report – Indianapolis Motor Speedway Road Course (Penske)

Newgarden: “We came in with a new package because we’ve struggled lately at Indy Road and we wanted to do everything we could to finish the season strong. It just seemed to be one thing after another for the Hitachi Chevy team, from the 10 minute penalty in practice that I was late to weigh in, to the engine change last night to the first lap incident. It was clearly not the finish we needed for the championship, but this team knows how to fight.’

Race Notes (Ed Carpenter Racing)

Hunter-Reay: “I got to 16th and made lap times from there. The weird thing was that we passed a car after that and lost four places. I didn’t see anyone else all day, no one else passed me and we finished 20th. I’ll have to go back and look at the pit circles.”

Malukas moved up eleven places to finish 16th (Dale Coyne Racing)

“It was a very good race for us in terms of strategy and with the car we had. I think we managed to gain a lot of places on drivers who had a better car than us, so that was encouraging.’

Extended Highlights: Indianapolis Grand Prix (IndyCar via YouTube)

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This day in motorsport

• 40 years ago today, Teo Fabi scored his breakthrough CART IndyCar win at the Pocono 500, having shown considerable potential in his Forsythe-run March. He was driven by Al Unser Jnr, whose father continued to lead the championship despite failing to finish in the top three for the first time that year