F1 News: AlphaTauri Chief Scared For Future Of Team – “We Still Have Huge Problems Coming Up”
Despite AlphaTauri sitting 7th in the Constructor Standings, team principal Franz Tost believes things won’t be easy for the team moving forward as they suffer with reliability issues.
Both Red Bull and AlphaTauri have been battling reliability issues thanks to the power unit that is indeed from Red Bull itself, and other parts on the car. This has caused Piere Gasly to retire from the Bahrain Grand Prix thanks to issues with the battery, and Yuki Tsunoda failed to even begin the Saudi Arabian GP thanks to a power unit issue.
We won’t even begin to talk about the issues Red Bull drivers Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez have had to deal with. But AlphaTauri has had such a number of issues that they’re coming close to taking on penalties. Gasly is currently sitting on his second engine, turbocharger, MGU-H, MGU-K, Energy Store, and Control Electronics. And Tsunoda is on his third for each of those parts
“We still have huge problems coming up,” Tost told Motorsport.com Italy, “or rather, Yuki will have them.
“He will have to start far behind in some races of the season and this worries me, because it was an expected situation.”
lap 46/47: noooo!@PierreGASLY has pulled off the track with a smokey car 😞 it was all going so well
— Scuderia AlphaTauri (@AlphaTauriF1) March 20, 2022
The AT03 also isn’t quite keeping up with the pack. The team has scored 16 points so far this year, but this is 1 point behind Haas and 6 points behind the likes of Alpine.
“Currently I would say we are two steps behind our rivals, not just one,” Tost told the press.
“Therefore we have to recover, and we should also avoid making certain mistakes like in qualifying, because the cars fighting for the central part of the grid are all very close.
“If you make a small mistake, you find yourself cut off.”
He continued:
“Right now we lack both performance and reliability. If we don’t improve, fifth place in the Constructors’ Championship will not be within our reach.
“We have to improve performance and reliability, otherwise we won’t have any chance of hitting our goals.”
