Franz Tost has now stepped down from his role as AlphaTauri’s team principal. A few days after ending his tenure, the Austrian provided a detailed explanation about some controversial remarks he made a few months ago. After AlphaTauri failed to score any points in the season opener in Bahrain, Tost shockingly said that he no longer trusted the engineers.
While explaining those same remarks now, the 67-year-old said (as quoted by crash.net), “The engineers whom I meant; they understood it“. He then explained the “background story” behind the same.
Tost said that after he visited his engineers, he received all kinds of promises that their car “will be fantastic“. However, immediately after testing, Tost knew that they had not done a good job.
As a result, he was furious with his engineers. Hence, when asked about the same during his press conference, Tost said that he did not trust his engineers anymore.
After giving his explanation for the same, the Austrian added, “If I don’t trust anymore the people, then they are out. This was the case. We changed them and brought in some new people. So we have now hopefully a good team in the aero department. I must say, all the upgrades they brought this year so far worked acceptably“.
AlphaTauri’s performance did improve significantly in the second part of 2023
After a difficult first part of the 2023 season, AlphaTauri did improve significantly in the second part of the campaign. After scoring just five points after 17 races, the Italian team managed to score 20 points in just the last five races.
Although AlphaTauri improved significantly, they failed to beat Williams for seventh place in the Constructors’ Championship. Another issue the team faced was with their drivers.
Since Nyck de Vries was underperforming massively, the team decided to sack him and replace him with eight-time Grand Prix winner Daniel Ricciardo. The Australian did showcase his potential from the very beginning by putting in decent performances for his team.
As a result of how well he performed, AlphaTauri did not hesitate in confirming him for 2024 as well. The team is now reportedly considering to change its name again and make it Racing Bulls.
Since AlphaTauri is the sister team of Red Bull, rivals have taken a jibe at the Milton Keynes outfit by comparing the Italian side to the “Pink Mercedes“. During the 2020 season, Racing Point’s car grabbed all the spotlight since the pink RP20 looked very similar to the Mercedes of that year.
