If at the top of the standings the situation is substantially clear, with the fight between Mercedes and Ferrari for second place in the constructors’ championship, the real challenge is being played out at the rear of the grid, with Williams, AlphaTauri, Alfa Romeo and Haas competing they are trying to play the seventh place final.
Until a few weeks ago, the position of the Grove team seemed rather solid, above all thanks to the inconstancy of their rivals, given that both Alfa Romeo and Haas had performed well in some events, but without finding the continuity necessary to counteract a Williams that had gone to points in five of the last seven Grands Prix. However, thanks to the packages brought to Singapore and Austin, AlphaTauri has also made visible steps forward, so much so that it overtook the other two Ferrari-powered teams and forcefully entered the fight for seventh place, which now no longer seems like an unachievable dream. .
The Mexican weekend was among those on which the Faenza team had placed an important focus, because it was aware that the AT04 could perform well thanks to its qualities in terms of mechanical traction and overall load, despite suffering on the straights due to the high drag. For this reason, after the excellent placing in Mexico, AlphaTauri hoped to be able to confirm itself as competitive in Brazil too, but Friday’s qualifying told a different story, with both cars already eliminated at the end of Q1. There were several factors that came into play: on the one hand the fact that in his last attempt Yuki Tsunoda had encountered some traffic, on the other the difficulties of Daniel Ricciardo in the first chicane, where on several occasions he had made a mistake and missed the chord point.
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
Daniel Ricciardo struggled especially in the first chicane in qualifying, also making a mistake which cost him his exit in Q1
The bitter disappointment of qualifying had even surprised the engineers of the Italian team, who actually thought they had a competitive single-seater on their side, enough to think they could compete for access to Q3, or in any case positions around the top ten. “We thought the car was reasonably competitive. It was clear that the gaps were close, as always happens at Interlagos, so during qualifying we completed three runs on new soft tires with Yuki and two with Daniel. Although we improved on every run, today we didn’t have enough pace to get through to Q2, which was frustrating considering the gap was less than a tenth. We knew we wouldn’t be as competitive as in Mexico, but we expected more than what we got today.”
The fact of having concluded qualifying already at the end of Q1 completely changed the scenarios for the rest of the weekend. Given the situation, the best opportunity to score some useful points for the constructors’ classification moved to the sprint and to a Saturday to be built from scratch, where in fact greater satisfactions arrived. Already in the sprint shootout, where temperatures reached peaks above 50°C, or around 10°C higher than those at the start of Q1 on Friday, the music changed for the Faenza team, which rediscovered those qualities it had lost the day before. Furthermore, the higher temperatures led other teams to suffer more from overheating in the central sector, thus losing momentum. Added to this was another element: the fact of having been eliminated already in the first phase meant that the Italian team still had many new sets of red band tyres, unlike several rivals who, having passed the first cut, they had exploited them in the following heats.
Knowing that it would have suffered on the long straight and on the stretch leading to turn four, given the high drag characteristics of the car which are still unresolved, the team had opted for a slightly looser wing than some of the competition’s rivals. This actually allowed us to find a few more km/h on the accelerations, even if we had to partly sacrifice cornering performance, the real strong point of the AT04. Clearly the possibility of focusing on two new soft tires to use on Saturday paid off, even if in reality the softer compound still proved to be flexible enough, enough to be able to complete the entire distance of the sprint.
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
Yuki Tsunoda, AlphaTauri AT04
If we look at the comparison with Mercedes, it emerges that the AT04 had an advantage of around 8 km/h on the long straight, also thanks to the poor competitiveness of the W15 on the sprints in absolute terms, but it paid the price especially in sequence 7- 8-9, first losing momentum in the fast corner, and then experiencing a deficit in terms of traction in the slow part. The story is very different if we take the Ferraris as a yardstick, which on the contrary had chosen to sacrifice the sprint to keep the new soft set for Sunday’s race. In this case the AT04 can have a margin in its favor precisely in those areas where AlpahTauri had suffered in comparison with the Stella, i.e. in the central sector. Even Charles Leclerc himself explained at the end of qualifying that it would probably have been possible to take sixth place from Tsunoda, who was about sixty thousandths behind, but the Japanese proved capable of putting together the right lap at the most favorable moment.
As anticipated, the fact of not having passed Q1 on Friday meant that AlphaTauri found itself with several new sets of soft rubber to exploit in both the Shootout and the Sprint, thus being able to plan a day of attack. A situation opposite to that of Ferrari which, having only one new set, had chosen to save it for Sunday’s race, thus having to face both the two sessions on Saturday with used tyres. This represented a point in favor for the Faenza team, not so much in the initial starting point, but in the first part of the race, where they were able to exploit that extra margin to try to fight the Maranello duo.
Despite a less than enthusiastic start, also given a near contact with Leclerc in turn two, Tsunoda still managed to maintain an excellent seventh position, also taking advantage of Oscar Piastri’s mistake, who in the meantime had come wide into the corner four. Although the Japanese driver was able to stay in the Monegasque’s wake substantially for the entire race, in reality he never found himself in a position to attack, even if the vertical collapse suffered by Lewis Hamilton at the end still allowed him to climb back up to in sixth place, thus bringing home three important points.
Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
Yuki Tsunoda, AlphaTauri AT04
Behind them, however, Daniel Ricciardo was immediately overtaken by Carlos Sainz, who had thus moved into the last valid spot to achieve a points finish in the sprint. The Australian, also taking advantage of the fact that the Spaniard from the Rossa was forced to do around 350 meters of lift and coast during the lap to keep the temperatures of the Power Unit under control, tried on several occasions to attack his rival, but without be able to get ahead definitively. The most concrete attacks came towards mid-race in turn one but, taking advantage of the DRS, Sainz was immediately able to regain his position. These duels then allowed Piastri himself to regain a position on Ricciardo, thus giving the Cavallino driver the chance to catch his breath and reach the finish line eighth.
At the end of the race, beyond the points gained, Tsunoda wanted to underline the progress made by AlphaTauri, in particular with the package brought to Austin, which contributed to ensuring greater load and better balance, thus giving the drivers greater confidence: “I think the updates made in Austin were a good step forward and, especially from there, we know we have the pace and what direction to take regarding the set up. And that gave us a little more confidence for the rest of the races. It was a good turning point.”
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