AlphaTauri big loser because of new wind tunnel?

AlphaTauri started the 2022 season strong, but after four races it has collapsed. Currently, there are only 27 points on the counter, almost all of which were gained at the beginning of the season. The team has problems with the wind tunnel.

Strong start for AlphaTauri was worth little

The incident between Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda at Silverstone did nothing to help the team. The team finally seemed competitive again, but still failed to score any points. The team started the season strongly, as it found out about the porpoising problems early on and had largely dealt with them before the start of the first race. Since the race in Imola, however, the team has stagnated. No upgrades have been made to the AT03 since and this is reflected in the score.

While AlphaTauri's car shares some development ideas with Red Bull Racing's RB18, there are also major differences. This is hardly surprising considering Max Verstappen leads the championship with Red Bull's car and AlphaTauri is at P8 in the championship. The biggest problem of the AT03 at the moment seems to be that no upgrades have been developed in the last seven races. According to Formu1a.uno This is mainly due to the new wind tunnel used by the team. The new wind tunnel is from Red Bull in Bedford and has a ten percent more accurate simulation than the one they used previously in Bicester.

AlphaTauri still struggling with windtunnel correlation

The team's engineers expected that the further development of the AT03 would be difficult at the beginning of the season, because the correlation would be problematic. The team had to relearn how the data collected in the new tunnel related to the performance on track. The Bicester wind tunnel was a known factor for the team, but in the middle of last year, it was exchanged for the new one. However, the team did keep working on upgrades. It only took longer than with other teams, because the engineers kept running into problems with the correlation. In France, the long awaited upgrade will come. According to Jody Egginton it will be a visible change to the frame of the car and the floor.

So for the first time since Italy the AT03 will be on the track with an improvement. The improvements to the floor will be mainly to generate more downforce. Egginton concludes: "We are trying to improve a car that we think we understand well. If the expectations come true then we should have a car that is more tunable and more controllable." For Gasly and Tsunoda it will be a welcome change. Gasly said the AT03 does not excel in any respect.