Franz Tost says he trusts his AlphaTauri F1 team engineers after departure of one who he didn’t trust after a slow 2023 start.
Having had a slow start to the F1 2023 campaign, Tost and AlphaTauri made headlines when he noted about not trusting his engineers after the team didn’t deliver of the promised jump they would see from last year to this.
Even though Yuki Tsunoda has done well enough to score few points after some gutsy drives, AlphaTauri is still lingering at the fag end of the midfield battle. The results have slightly improved but not to the level they wanted it to be at the start of 2023.
“There are different programmes going on, but the engineers tell me that we make some good progress, but I don’t trust them anymore,” said Tost at that time. “I just want to see the lap time because this is the only thing which counts. Because during the winter months, they told me the car is fantastic, we’re making big progress, and then we come to Bahrain, and we are nowhere. What should I say?”
While the team and also its drivers Tsunoda and Nyck de Vries played the situation down, but Tost has now revealed that the person or group of persons he didn’t trust is no longer with AlphaTauri. The outgoing team boss is pleased with the current crop.
“The person I didn’t trust anymore is out, as you can imagine, and the others I trust,” said Tost. “Totally easy. And they do a good job.” It is unclear who the person is but as per Motorsport Network, it is likely AlphaTauri’s head of aero Dickon Balmforth.
He is the person understood to have left the team after the start of the season, having come through working with Williams, Red Bull and then Toro Rosso/AlphaTauri. In fact, he has worked under Adrian Newey for over a decade at the senior F1 team.
After a decent Baku weekend courtesy of Tsunoda’s Q3 result and points, AlphaTauri is on the backfoot to start the Miami GP weekend and Tost knows it. “After Friday, I must say we are struggling. There’s a lot of work the engineers have to do. We were too slow, for whatever reason. And hopefully we can catch up,” he summed up.
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