Scuderia AlphaTauri pre-season a “success”

Scuderia AlphaTauri team principal Franz Tost has hailed their pre-season testing a “success” after not suffering any major problems throughout the six days in Barcelona.

Red Bull’s sister team, under a fresh name for 2020 in AlphaTauri (previously Toro Rosso), go into the new season looking to progress further up the midfield.
 
A P9 finish in 2018 became a P6 finish for 2019, only six points off Renault in fifth place with the midfield teams looking closer in performance than they had done previously.
 
Testing in Barcelona this time last year was hampered by cold weather and snow at point. Whereas this time out the only trouble was a blustery Thursday in the second week.
 
AlphaTauri had little problems, with Pierre Gasly suffering a loose pipe issue and Daniil Kvyat stopping on track in the second week in the AT01.
 
For Scuderia AlphaTauri, pre-season testing was a success as the car shows good performance and is reliable,” said Tost.
 
“We were also very lucky with the weather because most of the days we had quite high temperatures for this part of the year.
 
“It was only in the second week, especially on Thursday afternoon, that the wind has made running a bit trickier, but this gave us the possibility to test our new AT01 in different conditions.

“We’ve had two fewer days of testing this year, but I think we made the most out of it and learned a lot during these six days about the car, covering a total of 3580 km without any major problems.

“We experienced a few little issues which is normal at this stage, but we are generally satisfied with how everything went.”

AlphaTauri took on Honda as engine supplier back in 2018, which proved a crucial as Red Bull opted to switch to the Japanese manufacturer in 2019.

Tost added how their power units performance and reliability has improved for them in testing.

“The whole team did a fantastic job to get the car ready in time and performed well during the condensed schedule at the track,” he added.

“Honda made another step forward with the PU, improving both performance and reliability, which made our running smooth.

“I believe we had a strong pre-season thanks to the efforts from everyone in Bicester, Faenza, and Sakura, which resulted in an almost seamless test.”