Photo Credit: Red Bull Content Pool
For 2024 AlphaTauri will relaunch under a new name, and with long term Team Principal Franz Tost retiring at the end of 2023, there is a change in mentality from new boss Laurent Mekies. Mekies no longer wants the Faenza based team to be a mere training ground for Red Bull’s rookies but want to establish themselves as a force to be reckoned with going into 2024.
The team’s CEO Peter Bayer has said recently how new American based sponsors and the team’s new identity are the catalyst for change in his team. And with driver pairing of 8 time Grand Prix winner Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda entering his fourth season in Formula 1, the team is definitely not a young driving training ground, but now a team that want to see results and stand on their own feet.
“The shareholders, when they were resharpening things, they also said, ‘We want you to be competitive’,” said Bayer.
Bayer went to to speak about how a young driver needs time to adapt to the complexity of Formula 1.
“Franz always says, and honestly in the meantime I agree 100%, that a young driver needs three years to be sort of ready for F1. With all the complexity the sport is currently requiring, and the amount of information they have to digest and process and then feed back to us, so that we again understand as a team what to do, how to change the settings and so on, and to be competitive, simply they need a lot of time,” said Bayer
While Liam Lawson must be praised for his excellent job filling in for injured Daniel Ricciardo last year for 5 races, Bayer says one would recognise the lack of experience compared to Ricciardo with the amount of coaching needed on the team radio, whereas 34 year old Ricciardo is giving valuable feedback during the sessions. This shows how much effort, coaching and guidance a rookie needs.
“I understood that the moment we put a young driver into the car because what’s happening is it’s actually a change of flow of information, whilst with an experienced driver like Daniel it’s him feeding the engineer, who is feeding the operations room, who are then again coming back with stuff.”
Photo Credit: Red Bull Content Pool
“With a young driver it’s coming from the ops room to the engineers to the pitwall to the driver. ‘Constantly watch out in that corner. Now make sure you get the toggles right’, or ‘brake later, brake earlier, watch the steering, watch your rear, watch engine braking. Oh, by the way, there’s someone coming from behind.’”
“Honestly, it’s like in a theatre, the guy’s like bu-bu-bu-bu-bub all the time. While with Daniel it’s quiet. And once a lap, he will come back and say, ‘guys, an issue with the rear, can you have a look?’ ’Oh, yeah, we see actually overheating, we can do something on the differential.’ And it’s fixed.
“Or he will come back after three, four laps and say, ‘have you thought about changing the strategy? Because I’m stuck here in a DRS train, and rather than waiting, why don’t you?’ ‘Yeah, good idea!’
“You feel the difference. And then obviously the work we do with him in the simulator, vehicle performance, that whole area is a different ballgame.
“So one experienced driver who takes under his wings a young one. And even that young one needs to be prepared.”
Bayer went on to talk about how his team hopes to do some private testing in 2024 for young drivers in a 2022 car, which is permitted under the regulations.
“We want to take some of the money we’re making currently to make sure we can prepare the young drivers in the best possible way. I think Oscar Piastri is the best example. He ran I don’t know how many hundreds or thousands of miles but he came in and he understood the car. He understood the dynamics, he understood the switches, and it makes such a big difference, and so it connects you fully.
“And we have a big programme actually for Liam and Isack and potentially Iwasa, and we want to make sure that we run them as much as possible also. It’s interesting that the previous car is a ’22 car, so it’s finally a relevant car,” he concluded mentioning the intention of extending such interesting testing opportunity not only to the team’s Reserve Driver Lawson, but to other Red Bull
Junior Team Drivers Isack Hadjar and Ayumu Iwasa as well.
