The team's new team principal Mike Krack said Aston Martin will have to put in place a "performance structure" to persuade four-time Formula One world champion Sebastian Vettel to stay ahead of the season.
Vettel, 53-time race winner who joined the team from Ferrari in 2021, is out of contract at the end of the year and has said his future will depend on whether Aston Martin's 2022 challenger takes him to victory. Can return or not.
"It's clear that someone like Sebastian, a four-time world champion, doesn't want to be 15 or 12 or eighth," Krack, BMW's former motorsport chief who replaced Otmar Szafner, told reporters at his first media briefing. .
"It's our job to give a performance car, or say, a performance structure because I think Sebastian is a smart guy.
"He will focus more on what's happening and if he sees potential," he said at the online briefing, not just this year's car or whatever.
Krack worked with Vettel at BMW-Sauber, with whom Vettel made his Formula One race debut in 2007.
Krack was also Vettel's engineer when the German made his first appearance on a Grand Prix weekend for the Switzerland-based team in Friday practice at the 2006 Turkish Grand Prix.
Vettel has since won four titles, forming a succession with Red Bull from 2010–2013.
His run to victory puts him behind only Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher.
However, he hasn't won since the 2019 Singapore Grand Prix when he was at Ferrari.
Aston Martin finished seventh out of 10 teams in the overall standings last year, but the team's billionaire owner Lawrence Stroll has bigger ambitions and a five-year plan to lead it to championship success.
The 2022 season, which will see F1's biggest rules overhaul in decades, is the second year in that plan.
Krack acknowledged that such plans are not always successful.
But he cited Aston Martin's lean management structure, which includes former McLaren boss Martin Whitmarsh at the top as chief executive, as a strength.
He said the team had to avoid falling into the "corporate" way of working.
“The way we have divided tasks at the moment, we are fast, we are flexible and we can react faster than others,” he said.
"At this stage we have everything we need."