After an extremely disappointing start to the championship, Franz Tost didn’t hide his disappointment with the AlphaTauri engineers, guilty of having deceived him by promising improvements which, instead, did not arrive. 2022 had almost seemed like a year of transition due to the ineffective aerodynamics and excessive weight of the single-seater, two elements that the technicians hoped to be able to resolve with the project for the new season.
Improvements which, however, did not lead to the desired results, with the Faenza team starting 2023 uphill, often struggling to avoid the lower areas of the standings. Following those disappointing results, during the press conference of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix Tost had spared no great criticism of his engineers.
On that occasion, answering a question about the form of the team at the start of the season, the AlphaTauri Team Principal had openly said that during the winter he had been led to believe that the AT04 would be much more competitive than it revealed at the first race in Bahrain.
Nyck de Vries, AlphaTauri AT04
Photo by: Jake Grant / Motorsport Images
“There are several programs under study at the moment, the engineers tell me we are making progress, but I don’t trust them anymore, I just want to see the lap times, because that’s the only thing that matters. During the winter break (the engineers) they assured me that the car was going to be fantastic, that we were making great progress. But then we arrived in Bahrain and… Speechless,” thundered Tost in Jeddah.
Almost two months have passed since then, with the team from Faenza bringing the first updates, especially useful for increasing the aerodynamic load and improving top speeds, one of the critical points of the AT04. In Azerbaijan, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, AlphaTauri had an encouraging weekend, above all thanks to the tenth place conquered by Yuki Tsunoda.
On the eve of the Miami round, Tost was asked if his point of view on the matter had changed in recent weeks, with the Team Principal revealing that he had once again found confidence in the technical group after the departure of an engineer.
Franz Tost, Team Principal of Scuderia AlphaTauri
Photo by: Motorsport Images
“The person I no longer trusted has left, as you can imagine. And the others I trust, are absolutely calm. And they do a good job,” said the Austrian manager.
Tost did not specify which engineer he was referring to and the team declined to provide further details. However, AlphaTauri head of aerodynamics Dickon Balmforth has left the team following the start of the season, Motorsport.com has learned. Balmforth had been with the team since May 2018 having spent over twelve years at the Red Bull aero team led by Adrian Newey in Milton Keynes.
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