AlphaTauri warned: is the team falling into the same trap after all?

It's all part of it. Of course there are smiling faces at every team during the presentation of the 'new car'. Of course everyone is confident of a successful season. But with - as it now appears - continuing on an unsuccessful path, Nyck de Vries and Yuki Tsunoda 's team knows in advance that things could get pretty tough.

AlphaTauri was ninth last season in the battle for the constructors' title. Only ninth. A harsh laugh for Red Bull's Italian sister team, after years of firmly being in the middle of the pack, with the occasional outlier. Pierre Gasly 's Grand Prix victory at Monza in 2020 is fairly fresh in the memory.

Last season, everything was different

Last year really did nothing to recall that successful period: Yuki was too often Yuki, Pierre Gasly seemed to have lost his mojo and the car - mostly in qualifying - was not advancing. Yuki will regularly be Yuki next season too and, with Nyck de Vries, there is a rookie in his prime whose ability to settle into Formula 1 remains to be seen. They are anything but constant factors, you expect in advance. Moreover, in terms of car build, AlphaTauri seems to be falling into the same trap as the year before.

While performance went so horribly wrong during the season, AlphaTauri naturally looked for the causes. Throughout the 2022 season, AlphaTauri was 12 to 13 kilos overweight and failed to slim down. The extra ballast cost the drivers about 0.35 seconds per lap. Moreover, a heavy car means higher wear and overheating of the tyres. Therefore, work was done this season to develop a much lighter car.

Purchased parts

A second problem the team mentioned in particular last year was the use of parts made by Red Bull and then made available to AlphaTauri. In Formula 1, this is commonplace: smaller teams buy parts from the bigger teams. This saves them development costs, money that can be used in other areas. There is also a downside: the purchased parts never fit optimally into the design of the car.

Moreover, Red Bull develops a lot and fast. Often only at the very last minute, AlphaTauri received totally unexpected, customised parts, which then had to be integrated into the car as well as possible. In terms of aerodynamics, that is anything but optimal. That was the reason AlphaTauri indicated it would start manufacturing more parts in-house.

Continuing on the same footing

At the presentation of the AT04, the Italian team appears to have abandoned this initial idea. For instance, technical director Jody Egginton said, "The cooperation programme continues pretty much on the same footing as in previous years. It is very beneficial for us and therefore we will continue on the same path. We have some parts with the same specification as last year, some parts with a revised specification, but the overall range of parts we buy from Red Bull has remained pretty much the same. It's a strategic decision that we evaluate year by year, but overall it's pretty much a continuation of what we were doing last year."

It is a remarkable decision by AlphaTauri. Viewed from a financial perspective, it is completely understandable. But if this very thing was a decisive factor in last year's sporting slump, then continuing partly on the old foot may result in AlphaTauri failing to realise those much-desired steps after all.