(Motorsport news) It was a Valentine’s day treat for all the Formula 1 fans as AlphaTauri unveiled their 2022 challenger called AT03. Red Bull’s sister team will feature Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda for the upcoming season and will look to build on their sixth place finish from last year, taking advantage of the new changes in the car design to their advantage.
Formerly known as Toro Rosso, Alpha Tauri are now the fifth team on the grid to unveil their new car while the likes of Aston Martin and McLaren had a physical launch. The AT03 will be first seen in the flesh before the pre-season testing is set to begin on February 23rd. Gasly remains AlphaTauri’s top performer while Tsunoda will hope for greater consistency in the upcoming season and will look to cement his place in the Formula 1 grid.
Speaking at the launch, Pierre Gasly said “This year sees a huge change to the car as, due to the new regulations, the look and design is completely different, so the team has had to start from a clean sheet of paper. We won't know the true performance of the AT03 until we get it out on track at pre-season testing in Barcelona but so far, I think it looks great and I am very excited to get this new season started.
“My approach will be the same as the one I adopted last year. I will be trying to build on the run I had of very good results and to continue to be on top of my game with the car I have. I really hope that this is a year when I can fight at the very front, to finish regularly in the top five and even higher if the car is good enough for that.”
Team boss Franz Tost added: "I am excited to finally reveal what our 2022 Formula 1 car will look like. It is a completely new era for F1 and we hope that this package will be very strong, following last year's success. Once again, we have worked closely with AlphaTauri to launch our new car and I think we've managed to deliver something very special."
It’s quite possible that AlphaTauri could emerge as the dark horse in the upcoming season, especially considering that the Italian team have a great many things in their favour. For one, they have a stable driver lineup, the experience of doing a lot with a very small budget but still managing to get favourable results. “It was a little bit disjointed, as initially, the new regulations were going to be for 2021 so we'd started work a long time ago,” explained Technical Director Jody Egginton. “Then obviously with the pandemic, it was regulated that we must stop wind tunnel development during 2020 and we re-started it again on 1st January 2021. However, this coincided with our transition to the 60% wind tunnel meaning we had to design and manufacture a 60% model of the 2022 car.
“At the same time, we were also preparing a 60% model of the 2021 car as the AT02 launch spec car had been developed at 50%, but we were moving to 60% for in-season development as it's not permitted to run two wind tunnel facilities in parallel. Obviously, this created a greater workload, but the decision to move to a 60% facility was a long-established strategic one, which needed to be delivered on-plan to help meet our medium-term objectives. I have to say that the guys did a good job of managing the extra workload and we are confident this decision will provide the expected benefits in the medium term.”
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