Pierre Gasly has identified where AlphaTauri F1 struggled in the 2022 season.
AlphaTauri finished the 2021 season in 6th place in the constructors’ rankings, but in 2022, the regulations changed drastically, and they fell back to 9th place.
The new F1 regulations are designed to bring teams closer together on track and AlphaTauri hoped to improve.
However, according to Pierre Gasly, AlphaTauri struggled to keep up with the pace of development of other F1 teams, resulting in a mediocre finish.
“After last season we had high expectations and the momentum was there,” Gasly told RacingNews365.com.
“The new regulations were supposed to bring the field closer together and AlphaTauri’s hopes for the best season were not as high as they were at the start of the season.”
“I wasn’t feeling well at the beginning of the year, but then I wasn’t worried. It was a development battle, but it didn’t work out for us.”
Pierre Gasly explained that the team’s lack of development led to the use of heavier cars throughout the year, which had a knock-on effect on performance over the entire race weekend.
“The car hasn’t been bad, but we’ve struggled with extreme overweight all season.
“We made a lot of sacrifices in qualifying and that was the biggest problem that prevented us from performing as expected.”
“If you ask me, we had a better car from the beginning of the season, but we couldn’t compete because of the 12-13kg extra weight.
“I missed more than three tenths per lap in qualifying. I can’t remember how many times I missed Q3 because I was one tenth short.”
“Also, all that weight comes back to the race. It’s like running with a backpack. If you start a race with a car that’s too heavy, your tires will wear out faster and you’ll lose performance every time.”
Category: F1 / Pierre Guthrie / Alpha Tauri