AlphaTauri, difficult start: enraged Tost
It was supposed to be the season of redemption, and instead for AlphaTauri the beginning of the year didn’t give any satisfaction. Yuki Tsunoda and Nyck De Vries finished both races on the edge of the points, 11th and 14th respectively in both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. The AT04 didn’t help, and probably won’t help the riders in the next rounds either. And team principal Franz Tost is not ready to compete for the second season in a row with the sole objective of avoiding the last place in the constructors’ standings.
Toast’s words
In the Jeddah press conference dedicated to the team principals, the Austrian launched broadsides against his own engineers: “Unfortunately, I think the problem at the moment is the level of performance of the car, because we expected a much better car. We struggled in Bahrain. It feels a bit different here, I hope at least we will be with one car in Q3, but we have to do a lot of things to make the car faster. Especially regarding aerodynamics, there are several programs underway. The engineers tell me we will make good progress, but I no longer trust them. I just want to see the lap time because that’s all that matters“he told reporters. “During the winter months they told me the car was fantastic, that we had made great progress. Then we arrived in Bahrain and we were scattered in the standings. What should I say?“.
The limits of the AT04: developments coming to Melbourne
“There is not enough downforce. This is why the car is unstable under braking, overheats the rear tyres, has bad traction, all you need to set a good lap timeTost added. “The budget cap does not prevent us from developing, this is included in our plan. But are we heading in the right direction? Over the winter months we saw that on paper, on the computer, we had made great progress on last year’s car. But I no longer trust the paper, I want to see on the track if we can improve the car’s performance, its underbody, the brake lines and the aerodynamic parts. We are preparing updates for the next races, we will bring something to Melbourne“.
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