LANDING ON YOUR FEET
Pierre Gasly has driven superbly since demotion from Red Bull in 2019, but the team formerly known as Toro Rosso has come on strong too – building a car that can often challenge Ferrari and Mclaren. Here Gasly reveals to GP Racing how Alphatauri has given him the tools needed to rebuild his reputation
The sentiment Alphatauri technical director Jody Egginton expressed in the aftermath of Pierre Gasly’s seventh place in the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix rather neatly sums up just how far the former Minardi squad has progressed in recent seasons.
Gasly’s form is perhaps the best place to start when considering this team’s recent return to prominence. After all, he matched Sebastian Vettel’s 2008 triumph for Toro Rosso by taking his own maiden F1 victory at Monza last year, the shock result of that campaign. This win came just over a year after Gasly’s ignominious demotion to Red Bull’s junior team – which is actually not what it’s supposed to be called these days…
Red Bull’s “sister” team – a description Christian Horner used following Gasly’s Monza win – is now firmly in the fight at the front of the midfield battle. On average across 2020, Alphatauri had F1’s seventh fastest car, but it was barely behind the fifth fastest package: Mclaren’s. After the early races in 2021, Alphatauri was ranked fourth fastest. While Gasly points GP Racing towards his team boss when we ask what’s behind that breakthrough progress, he can’t help but offer his own theory.
“At the end, money in Formula 1 is performance,” says Gasly. “Not always, but it just clearly means you have more and bigger opportunities to find performance. In recent years, resources have increased; the knowledge [too]. The people – the way they are recruiting [with the senior team at] Red Bull has helped as well. Honda, I think when you compare to two, three years ago, the performance related to the others wasn’t the same as it is today. Also a bit of stability inside the team [has helped].
“It seems like many areas have improved and got us closer to the top teams, which we managed to show with the performance [on-track].”
Alphatauri is clearly benefitting from the right investment and resource allocation from Red Bull – and Dietrich Mateschitz’s two F1 entitles are working the system well too. Both regularly highlight ‘synergy’ at play. It’s horrible corporate speak, but it does represent what they’re doing. Since 2019, Alphatauri (then Toro Rosso) has been taking as many listed parts supplied by Red Bull as the rules allow – including gearboxes, hydraulics and suspension elements.
“Between 2008 and 2021 we had competitive cars,” says Alphatauri team boss Franz Tost. “During these years, everything has been developed from the design office, production. The vehicle performance group improved a lot, the engineering at the race track has become much better and the engineers are much more experienced now – especially the aerodynamic department. I think we made a big step forward. The complete team developed in the last years and this is the result.”
But, right now, the record books disguise Alphatauri’s rate of progress. The team finished only seventh in 2020, down from sixth in 2019 – which itself only equalled Toro Rosso’s previous best campaign when Vettel won that race back in 2008. This small step backwards in terms of constructors’ championship placings can be explained by lost points to reliability and poor form in the wet last year – but Gasly feels clear improvements when behind the wheel.
“There was maybe a bit more focus in the past on the race,” he says when comparing the handling of the machines the team is now producing compared with those in which he made his F1 bow nearly four years ago. “Like, [set-up] direction was putting a bit more understeer in the car and accepting that the car will turn on just the characteristic of the car. [That would] mean that you needed to deal with some understeer
““Obviously, the entire team is disappointed…
mid-corner and struggle to retain the car in the low speeds. Traction would be quite difficult as well, especially in low-speed [corners].
“That’s where the team [has now] managed to get a platform that works better from highspeed to low-speeds – something which is more consistent, with a bit better potential. Obviously, there are many things that come into play. The team has improved in all areas. But in terms of car platform, I think it’s more [that it’s now] working in all areas, where before we could [only] make maybe one area great: high-speed or mediumspeed, but then another would suffer a lot more.”
Gasly’s strong 2020 form continued his impressive personal recovery in the second half of 2019 after being extricated from Max Verstappen’s shadow at Red Bull. Alphatauri’s way of engineering its package to give its drivers a wider operating range played a big part in this. One particularly intriguing aspect of the current AT02 is that it does not feature the complete rear end package Red Bull used in 2020 – despite Alphatauri being permitted to use it without spending one of its precious 2021 development tokens, thanks to a rules loophole regarding upgrading listed parts from
2019 to those produced last year. It’s worth remembering just how skittish the rear end of RB16 was last year…
But for Gasly, there’s one particular part of Alphatauri’s current package, which featured in 2020 too, that’s giving him a boost. “Having the front axle sticking at the apex, mid-corner,” he reveals. “I like to carry quite a lot of minimum speed. All sorts of corners, I always try to let the car roll and carry a lot of speed by and in the rotation, to allow [me] to have a good and straight exit still.
“With these [current F1] cars, often you get understeer mid-corner, or by pushing the entry quite hard and the front gives up at the apex. We managed to find quite a good compromise, which allows us to push the entry quite hard and still get the front axle to stick at the apex.”
There’s another part of the explanation behind Gasly/alphatauri’s improved form that shouldn’t be underplayed: engine performance. Honda is about to leave F1 once again – but will do so on positive terms after making giant strides since splitting with Mclaren. This is Honda’s fourth
We managed to find quite a good compromise, which allows us to push the entry quite hard and still get the front axle to stick at the apex
season working with Toro Rosso/alphatauri, and as the Japanese manufacturer heads towards the exit it has produced a lighter, leaner, lower engine (see sidebar) which has given Alphatauri and Red Bull a serious performance boost.
“It’s just huge,” says Gasly when asked how important Honda’s work has been to Alphatauri’s recent rise. “When they commit to something, Japanese people and especially Honda – I’ve been working with them for quite a few years – they really commit and then they work till they get to the point that they’ve always wanted. And I think now we’re starting to see that, which is [why it’s an] even bigger shame to see them leaving at the end of the year because I think there would be really good things to do in the future [together].”
Alphatauri will still benefit from Honda’s efforts even after the company leaves F1, as Red Bull will take over production from its new Powertrains division in 2022. But there’s further reasons for the team to feel confident about the coming years. The cost cap will help level things out with the bigger squads to a certain extent, and there’s F1’s (modest) new performance balancing rules regarding aerodynamic development. But, in any case, Alphatauri is still set to gain as the extra capacity the new development rules have created means it can use Red Bull’s 60% scale model windtunnel in Bedford. Until this year, Alphatauri was the last team running a 50% model at its Bicester facility – so the change is set to have an impact on its 2022 design efforts.
But results are what really matters in F1 – so the cliché goes. And that’s why Egginton’s words ring so true for Alphatauri’s current perspective. It’s had a taste of success again and is hungry for more, which is delighting the driver that brought the team back to the top step of the podium.
“Since 2017, when I came in the team, it’s the best dynamic that I’ve seen,” concludes Gasly. “I just feel like there is a great atmosphere, there is a great energy. There’s clearly a great mentality – people want more. [It’s], ‘we should not just be happy with what we’ve got, but we should work to deliver even better results’. It also really makes me happy to see that people have that motivation to deliver more and try to achieve more. I’m really happy to also be part of this project. It’s a great time at the moment in Alphatauri.”
“Since 2017, when I came in the team, it’s the best dynamic that I’ve seen. I just feel like there is a great atmosphere, there is a great energy. There’s clearly a great mentality – people want more