AlphaTauri boss, Franz Tost has admitted that he no longer has any trust in his team's engineers.

Despite appearances, Tost is every bit as tough as countryman Helmut Marko, as the likes of Scott Speed will readily attest.

Nonetheless, there was surprise when the AlphaTauri boss admitted that he no longer trusts the Faenza-based team's engineers.

Coming off the back of a disastrous season in which it slipped to ninth in the standings, and under threat of being moved to the UK or sold off, Tost was looking to the team making a considerable step forward this season, however the early signs suggest this is not to be the case.

Asked if Bahrain, where drivers Yuki Tsunoda and Nyck de Vries qualified 14th and 19th, going on to finish the race 11th and 14th, was down to the current level of performance of the car or whether the weekend had thrown up unforeseen problems, Tost replied: "Unfortunately, I think it's currently the performance level of the car, because we expected a much better car.

"We struggled in Bahrain, it looks a little bit different here," he added. "I hope that at least we are with one car in Q3, 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, but the engineers tell me that we 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 which counts."

Asked if he really meant that he no longer trust his engineers, he said: "Yes! Because during the winter months, they told me the car is fantastic, we're making big progress, and then we come to Bahrain, and we are nowhere. What should I say?"

As to the issues with the car, he said: "Too little downforce. Not enough downforce, therefore the car is unstable under braking, overheating the rear tyres, washing-out at the apex, bad traction. Everything what you need to do a good lap time."

Asked if he expects an improvement this weekend, he replied: "Here in Jeddah the characteristic of the racetrack is completely different. And both drivers were, yeah, not satisfied with the car but said the car feels better than in Bahrain. We have still some understeering problems which we have to get rid of, and the rest, and we will see.

"We are coming up with updates to the next races," he confirmed. "We bring something to Melbourne and afterwards also to Baku. It's within our programme that we bring to nearly every race a small upgrade."

Asked if part of the problem was the fact that the team had switched from using its own windtunnel to that of Red Bull, he said: "It has nothing to do with this year's car because we changed the wind tunnel last year. That had a big influence, but not this year."

In light of Toto Wolff's mantra of "tough love" at Mercedes, Tost was asked if he would adopt a similar philosophy, to which the Mercedes boss joked: "He's only tough!"

"I don't care about that!" laughed Tost. "I just want to see a fast car. Whether tough or not, I simply don't care."

Check out our Saturday gallery from Jeddah here.

LATEST NEWS

more news >

LATEST IMAGES

galleries >

Click to go to the main galleries section

READERS COMMENTS

1. Posted by kenji, 18/03/2023 13:02

"Time to talk to the Andrettis."

Rating: Positive (5) Rate comment: Positive | NegativeReport this comment

2. Posted by Chester, 18/03/2023 12:32

"Why wouldn't Red Bull get more involved to set the ship right? Red Bull's seeming lack of interest may presage a sale of Alpha Tauri, now that Didi is gone."

"I don't trust them anymore," says Tost of AlphaTauri engineers

LATEST NEWS

RELATED ARTICLES

LATEST IMAGES

POST A COMMENT

Post your comment

READERS COMMENTS

Share this page