Why AlphaTauri 'changed its philosophy of development'

Ewan Gale
Friday 15 January 2021 07:28

AlphaTauri team principal Franz Tost has revealed the flurry of upgrades brought to races by the team last year were intended to give engineers a "better overview" of the car's relative performance.

Most of the grid developed its cars up to the final triple-header of the season knowing there would be a large carryover of parts from last year to this.

AlphaTauri chose to make incremental changes to the AT01 across the season rather than introduce a single significant upgrade, as Racing Point did, for example, with the specification seen on Lance Stroll's car at Mugello.

Explaining these smaller upgrades helped the engineering team, Tost said: “We brought to nearly all of the races some smaller parts. We changed our philosophy of development.

"It’s not that we have been bringing a big upgrade, we do it step-by-step because the engineers then have a better overview if something doesn’t work.

“If you bring one big upgrade and it doesn’t work from the first minute onward, it is difficult to find out where you have the problem.

"If you upgrade smaller parts then it is easier to get control of it and it looks like the upgrades which we brought, which were on the side of the bargeboards, a little bit on the front wing and a bit on the floor, worked.”

F1 delayed the introduction of a new car formula with updated aerodynamic regulations until 2022 in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, instead electing to effectively use the same car designs across two years.

But the continual development of the cars and increased speed year-on-year prompted the FIA and teams to agree to an aerodynamic redesign for the 2020-spec cars for safety purposes.