38. Mike Krack

Mike Krack (born March 18, 1972) is a Luxembourgish motorsports engineer. He has worked at BMW Sauber F1 as the chief engineer; Porsche WEC team as head of track engineering; and at BMW as the Head of Engineering, Operations and Organization for Racing and Testing. Mike has also had stints in Formula 3 and DTM. He is currently the Team Principal of the Aston Martin Formula One Team.

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Krack started his engineering journey at BMW in July 1998 in the test engineer role. He left the position at the start of 2001 to join Sauber. He rose through the ranks, beginning as Data Analysis Engineer. In December 2003, he was promoted to Felipe Massa’s Race Engineer and later to Chief Engineer when BMW Sauber was formed. He worked with a young Sebastian Vettel through practice sessions until his debut in the 2007 Indianapolis Grand Prix. Krack left BMW when they decided to focus on 2009 rather than Robert Kubica’s title challenge in 2008.

He then had stints at Kolles & Heinz Union and Hitech in Formula 3. He returned to BMW as chief engineer of the DTM department in October 2010 but left at the end of 2012 to join Porsche. There, he was given the Head of Track Engineering role for their World Endurance Championship team. While at Porsche, he worked closely on the 919 Hybrid, which would take one victory and four podiums.

He left in 2014 to rejoin BMW again as a senior performance engineer. From 2014 to 2022, he has gone through many roles, including overseeing their Formula E, IMSA and GT programmes. In 2018, he was appointed Head of Race & Test Engineering, Operations & Organisation.

On January 14 2022, Krack was announced as team principal of the Aston Martin Formula One Team following the departure of Otmar Szafnauer.

Mike Krack commented on his appointment:

It is a thrill and an honour to have been appointed to the position of Team Principal of the Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team. I am very grateful to Lawrence [Stroll] and Martin [Whitmarsh] for giving me such a fantastic opportunity.

Aston Martin is one of the greatest automotive brands in the world, and to have been asked to play a leading role in delivering the on-track Formula One success that such an illustrious name so richly deserves is a challenge that I plan to embrace with energy and enthusiasm.

I have been working in motorsport for over 20 years and worked in Formula One with Seb Vettel in 2006 and 2007 when I was a BMW-Sauber engineer, and he was the team’s test driver.

I like how fast and skilled he is, and it will be great to see him again. Lance Stroll is a seriously fast and talented driver, too, with 100 Grands Prix starts to his name, and I am very much looking forward to working closely with him.

Team Silverstone has always impressed me. It is full of talented people and real racers. That racer’s culture and values are required to succeed in motorsport – I know that, and my new colleagues at Aston Martin Cognizant Formula One Team realise it, too. We will work incredibly hard. We want to win. Together, we will.