AlphaTauri technical director’s ‘pessimistic’ approach

Maria Bright 09 Mar 2022 5:30 AM

Yuki Tsunoda driving the AlphaTauri AT03. Spain, February 2022. — Yuki Tsunoda driving the AlphaTauri AT03 on day one of testing. Spain, February 2022.

The sister team to RedBull – yet just as fierce and intense. AlphaTauri technical director Jody Egginton explains how focusing on themselves is the best approach to follow.

Bahrain testing kicks-off on March 10, with AlphaTauri expected to show some of their true colours for this coming season.

Speaking to The Race, Egginton explained that by the team not getting too ahead of themselves after good results, it keeps them on track – literally – and cool, calm and collected.

Egginton said: “Personally, being pessimistic has served me well, especially since picking up this job three years ago.

“We’re following our path, we’ve got our processes, we’re doing our thing and we get some things right, we get some things wrong. There’s a momentum in the team. We’re doing good things, we’ve got a good driver line-up, we’ve got quite a stable technical group and a stable team.”

F1 is a highly intense sport, with pressure mounting from all sides, let alone Franz Tost, team principal of AlphaTauri.

“If people consider us to be doing good things, that’s fantastic,” Egginton continued.

“But we’re just focused on ourselves. It’s an approach that served me well. The moment you think you’re [doing well] it’s probably the moment it bites you.”

Knight Drivers ready to get back on track in Bahrain 🤙 pic.twitter.com/dCyjpMt6cn

— Scuderia AlphaTauri (@AlphaTauriF1) March 7, 2022

AlphaTauri averaged out to be the fifth/sixth fastest team on the grid last year, securing multiple points finishes.

Despite being a sister to Red Bull, the cars are completely different, and since Egginton took the reins as technical director, the team have only gotten better.

New regulations coming into play this season may see racing become closer, and so the team wanted to focus on what was being developed underneath the body work.

Egginton said: “One of our key objectives with these new regulations was making sure that underneath the skin the car was such that we could do heavy aero development without having to do painful cooling updates and other things, assuming we got our basic numbers right.

“We wanted maximum freedom to be able to develop the aero without expensive side projects in order to make the aero development work. And we’ve achieved that. That’s been one of the big philosophies over the last year, to be able to get quick development to the car and not be constrained by something that you didn’t do a perfect job with the first time.”

The team finished P6 in the Constructors’ Standings last year, and so with an “aggressive” approach, they might just be fighting for more podiums.

Bahrain will be the first race of the 2022 season, held between March 18-20.