“I hope that we get one car in Q3,” Franz Tost gives a brutal rundown about AlphaTauri’s plan for the Saudi Arabian GP
AlphaTauri has completed analysis between the Bahrain GP and FP in Jeddah, the team hopes it will lead them in the right direction.
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Franz Tost. Image via Insider.
Franz Tost, AlphaTauri’s team principal, is disappointed with his team. During the press conference in Saudi Arabia, he expressed his frustration with the team’s engineers. He stated that he does not trust them anymore after the season opener. Tost expected a better package for the 2023 season. He feels the car does not deliver the expected gains.
AlphaTauri has a new driver line-up for this season. The drivers Yuki Tsunoda and Nyck De Vries, finished 11th and 14th, respectively, at the Bahrain GP. Tsunoda was battling Alex Albon for the 10th place but did not have the pace to do so. This worried Tost, he trusted his engineers to make progress over the winter break, but he feels they are in the same position as last year. AlphaTauri finished ninth in the championship standings last season.
After the free practice sessions for the Saudi Arabian GP, Franz Tost stated, “We struggled in Bahrain, it looks a little bit different here. I hope that at least we get one car in Q3, but we have to do a lot of things to make the car faster, especially on the aerodynamic side. Different programmes are going on. The engineers tell me that we make some good progress, but I don’t trust them anymore. I just want to see the lap time because this is the only thing which counts.”
Franz Tost does not believe his engineers anymore
Franz Tost further added that the AT04 does not have enough downforce. Hence, the car is unstable under braking. He also feels that they have bad traction and overheating the rear tyres. All this is essential to do a good lap, and Tost believes AlphaTauri is not where they want to be at the moment. He wants the team to work hard and deliver a competitive car.
“During the winter months we saw that, at least on paper, on a computer, we made big progress in comparison to last year’s car. But all these figures nowadays, as I mentioned before, I don’t trust them anymore.” Tost wants to take the next step to go in the right direction. “I think now with all the knowledge we have after the Bahrain test and after the Bahrain race, the engineers should be in a position to sort it out and to come up with new parts which improve the performance of the car.”
At the free practice session in Jeddah, the team worked hard to conduct tests and gather data. AlphaTauri tried different setups as this circuit is different from the others. Franz Tost expected the Jeddah track to suit their car better. The former Austrian racing driver explained that his two drivers had different duties during the FP1 and FP2. While De Vries completed many laps to get used to the track before the race, Tsunoda was a part of the aero tests conducted. Tost believes this will help the team with the development.
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Sugantha Meena
(493 Articles Published)