Franz Tost says AlphaTauri realised that they had wrong people in wrong place and so they had to bring in new people to go on the new direction.
AlphaTauri did not have a good start to F1 2023 campaign and now former boss Tost made harsh remarks about the engineering department stating that they are not living upto the expectations set. It came around rumours about the sale of the team.
But Red Bull did not pull the trigger as gradually the team started to gain momentum and make strides especially in the second half. They came close to beating Williams as they made up two places in the last few rounds to end up eighth in the order.
Recalling the earlier moments, Tost noted about having wrong people in the wrong place and that they had to bring in new people in the engineering department. The hiring started early in the year and only gradually things started to take shape.
“Because the wrong people were in the wrong place,” said Tost when asked why the earlier updates didn’t work but the new ones did. “We brought in new people. I realised last year, in March/April that from the aero side we were not going in the right direction. We had a wrong philosophy. It’s always difficult to convince engineers to go in another direction because they will never adapt this.
“Therefore it’s better to bring other people in. This is what we did. This is what I just explained before. But until these people can work, you wait a year. And this was the problem which we had, that they could start only in April this year although we recognised that we had problems last year already.
“And the team still is not fully recruited, they’re still coming, some other aerodynamic people and why I was pushing so much to bring the upgrades is to get an understanding whether this new group goes in the right direction, on philosophy, because otherwise also next year would have been a problem.
“And this is what I wanted to prevent under all circumstances. And the reason why everything came together in the second half of the year was simply because we didn’t have these new people beforehand,” summed up Tost, who elaborated on the changes at the senior level with Peter Bayer and Laurent Mekies coming in.
While Bayer already started out, Mekies will join next month after his gardening period is over. Tost will be there in the transition period as a consultant at Faenza. “Peter is with us since June and I think that we are working together very closely,” he said. “He understands the team now much better and he has got a lot of experience. He knows Formula 1.
“And Laurent Mekies anyway was working with us, he knows the team from the past and I think that these two people are absolutely the right people to take over the team. And I expect that they will bring the team to another level because both of them have a lot of experience.
“Both of them know Formula 1 and I’m convinced that they will do a very good job. And regarding me, I have a very long to-do list because the last 20/30 years I didn’t have time for anything. And nevertheless, I will not sit at the pit wall but at home with minimum three/four TVs where I see the times, split times and everything and will watch Formula 1, MotoGP and all the other things which I watched also in the past.”
Here’s AlphaTauri pair during Honda Thanks Day
Here’s Franz Tost on his F1 career and more
Here’s Yuki Tsunoda on missing out
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