In Formula 1 there is a team that will have a more eventful winter than all the others, at least on paper. That's AlphaTauri.
The now former team of Franz Tost – who handed over the helm of the team to Laurent Mekies arriving from Ferrari – will not only be involved in the name change which will make it lose the name of the Red Bull home clothing brand, but also define the final details of the next single-seater.
This, presumably, will be presented in the first two weeks of February as has often happened in the past. Meanwhile, Jonathan Eddolls, head of track engineering at AlphaTauri, has already given some previews of the car which will be entrusted to Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo in 2024.
In 2023 AlphaTauri implemented the suspensions on its own and the season, at least until the last part, did not go according to plan at all. Peter Bayer, CEO of the Faenza team, admitted the conceptual error made during the preparation of the last single-seater that will bear the name of the clothing brand in the hands of Red Bull.
“The initial decision to do our own thing with those critical parts was simply a mistake, and the people who made the decision at the time are no longer with us,” Bayer said.
“I think engineers always have a lot of arguments to justify certain choices, but I think everyone in the paddock has understood that with this new regulation and with the new downforce scheme, which relies so much on the bottom, the suspension is the thing more important. There is the bottom and then there are the suspensions. If these two things don't work together, you might as well not go out.”
From next year, the synergy between Red Bull Racing and the Faenza team will be even closer. There will be many components that AlphaTauri will receive from the Milton Keynes factory and, at that point, the design department of the Mekies team set to work to design the shapes of the new single-seater starting from the Red Bull parts.
The first of these, the suspensions, have already been decided. Eddolls explained why in 2024 the Austro-Italian team will adopt the suspensions of the RB19, single-seaters which dominated the 2023 season especially in the hands of Max Verstappen.
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
Ayumu Iwasa, AlphaTauri AT04
“In 2024 we will use the suspension from the RB19. Red Bull is a very aggressive team in development and they release their components late, because they want to maximize the performance of their car.”
“And then for us, sometimes, to take into consideration something particular like a suspension so late… It's an integral part of the car, of the package and sometimes yes, it's very difficult to add it to the car and get an optimal package in a time frame of such a short time.”
The 42-year-old engineer also explained the process that will lead AlphaTauri to design a single-seater using many Red Bull components.
“It's kind of 'fit and forget' on our part, in a way, because we take their components, fit them to our car and develop them around that.”
After a tremendous start to 2023, AlphaTauri worked well on aerodynamics and managed to change things in the last part of the season, bringing many new features from the wind tunnel. “As I said, I think the key point is aerodynamics, where the greatest progress has been made. We have certainly made a step forward with the suspension too.”
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