AlphaTauri was among the most anticipated teams in this 2022. After a couple of seasons as the absolute protagonist of the midfield – thanks to some podiums and the victory obtained by Pierre Gasly in 2020 – the team from Faenza had started this year to fight seriously to get the much coveted fifth place in the Constructors’ Championship.
After 13 rounds, the team headed by Franz Tost is in eighth place with just 27 points collected. This means not only that it is not in the fight for fourth place with Alpine and McLaren, but also that Alfa Romeo and Haas F1 that precede it in turn have an advantage of 24 and 7 points respectively.
An unsatisfactory position for AlphaTauri, so much so as to push Helmut Marko not to use mince words – and this is certainly not new – to define the first part of 2022 for the Italian-Austrian team.
“Am I satisfied? Absolutely not,” the Red Bull Racing super advisor told Motorsport.com exclusively.
Marko then went deep into his discontent with AlphaTauri’s results. The car, the AT03, did not start well at all. But what made the situation worse, according to Helmut, were the updates, which arrived too late compared to the direct competition.
“Alpha Tauri didn’t have a decent upgrade until Le Castellet, they didn’t have enough upgrades.”
“The race was bad. Gasly made a mistake when trying to overtake, he lost his position in the standings. Ocon collided with Yuki and the car was heavily damaged.”
“The update has improved things a bit and has been successful. Now we have to continue working from there. But the ambition to be successful in midfield is not satisfied at the moment.”
To conclude the argument linked to AlphaTauri, when asked whether the team will continue to have the same engines as Red Bull Racing even after 2026 – therefore Porsche engines – Marko’s response was eloquent: “Yes, that’s the plan” .
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