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Mike Krack has conceded that Spa will be Aston Martin's most challenging circuit of the year, echoing comments made by Lance Stroll during the British Grand Prix.
The Silverstone-based team's chief engineer highlighted that the issue isn't solely the lap length – the longest on the Formula 1 calendar – but also the inherent characteristics of the track, nestled deep within the Ardennes forest.
With just 44 laps, the Belgian Grand Prix is the only race in the campaign with fewer than 50 laps. The circuit features numerous long straights or sections taken at full throttle, making energy management particularly challenging. This problem is further compounded by the already underpowered Honda power unit in the rear of the Aston Martin car.
While eagerly anticipated chassis upgrades are due next weekend for the Hungarian Grand Prix, the team, which has only secured a single point all season thanks to Fernando Alonso in Monaco, may have to endure another painful round before that relief. For these reasons, Stroll stated that the weekend would be "really tough" and "probably the worst track of the year" for the AMR26, and Krack was compelled to agree with the Canadian.
"Yes, I think we know the sensitivity of this track to the different car parameters, and I have to agree with Lance. We will suffer not only from the lap length but also from the nature of the track. So I think we can expect that," he said.
"This track is quite complex compared to Silverstone," admitted Shintaro Orihara, Honda's chief engineer and general manager. "We have long straights, and it's quite difficult from the perspective of power distribution from the MGU-K... We have prepared some data, but we need to check what the best strategy is for covering the entire long straights. If we use the power at the beginning of the straight, we will lose a lot of the car's speed by the end of it, so we need to consider where to deploy it," Orihara added.
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