Alpha Tauri team principal Franz Tost has been openly critical of his engineering team saying that “he doesn’t trust them” after a disappointing start to life for the AT04.
[adrotate banner=”10″]
Get 10% off all official F1 Merch at TheRaceWorks.com using code ‘EF1‘ at checkout.
At the Bahrain Grand Prix, the car struggled throughout the speed range with an inherent lack of downforce, with the AT04 looking like arguably the slowest car in the field.
Neither Nyck de Vries or Yuki Tsunoda scored points in the race and qualified 18th and 14th respectively.
And while the Sakhir circuit is only a single data point to go off and is a track that can often highlight a car’s specific weaknesses, Tost is disappointed after he revealed the technical team assured him that the new car would be a big step forward from last year’s disappointing machine.
“Unfortunately, I think it’s currently the performance level of the car, because we expected a much better car”, he said when asked about his thoughts on its performance during the opening race of the season.
“We struggled in Bahrain. It looks a little bit different here. I hope that at least we are with one car in Q3 of qualifying, but we have to do a lot of things to make the car faster, especially on the aerodynamic side, there are different programmes going on.
“The engineers are telling me that we will make some good progress, but I don’t trust them anymore.
“I just want to see the lap time because this is the only thing that counts.”
“During the winter months they told me the car is fantastic, we’ve made a big progress.
“Then we come to Bahrain, and we are nowhere. What should I say?”
Where is the car struggling?
Tost explained what the weaknesses of the current package are, admitting that they are lacking in terms of “everything you need to do a good lap time.”
He said: “[The car has] not enough downforce. Therefore, the car is unstable under braking, overheating the rear tyres, washing out at the apex, [and has] bad traction.”
He added: “As I mentioned before, during the winter months we saw that at least on paper, on the computer, we made big progress in comparison to last year’s car, but all these figures, as I mentioned before, I don’t trust them anymore.
“I want to see now with the next steps, that we go in the right direction, that we can improve the performance of the car, that we are able to do this.
“This is specialist work on the floor, brake ducts and all the other aerodynamic parts.
“I think now with all the knowledge we have after the Bahrain test and after the Bahrain race, the engineers should be in a position to sort it out and come up with new parts, which should improve the performance of the car.”
The Austrian said that the budget cap restrictions will not prevent the team from conducting plenty of developments and added that they are bringing updates to Melbourne and to Baku before having further “small” upgrades brought to “nearly every race” this season.
[adrotate banner=”6″]
Get 10% off all official F1 Merch at TheRaceWorks.com using code ‘EF1’ at checkout.
Photo: Scuderia Alpha Tauri F1 Team