The Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda team has shown a lot of promise since the start of the season. The team looks set to be part of the tough midfield battle that is unfolding in the new season for the 2021 FIA Formula 1 World Championship.
AlphaTauri is currently in fifth position in the constructors’ championship with eight points, but could have been in a better position if they had maximized the performance they have in their new challenger. Pierre Gasly has shown a good turn of speed and qualified in fifth position in the first two races. Yuki Tsunoda has not qualified well and has made mistakes in the races.
Jonathan Eddolls, Chief Race Engineer for the team, felt the team struggled in the slippery and windy conditions at the Autódromo Internacional do Algarve circuit. Eddolls thinks the team has to do a lot of work to understand the data accumulated during the Friday sessions and improve on the performance on the soft compound tyres.
Eddolls said: “It wasn’t quite as successful a Friday as we were hoping for, or that we’ve become accustomed to maybe. For FP1, our focus was on the medium and hard compounds, alongside some aero testing on Pierre’s car. Yuki spent the morning session learning the track, as he’s never driven here before, and we came out of that session relatively happy with the car and the performance.
“Likewise, going into the start of FP2 on the Mediums, we were quite comfortable with the pace of the car. We then moved to the soft tyre, which has been an issue for us as we weren’t able to extract the pace from the car that we would’ve liked. The conditions here are very challenging with the wind – there was a tailwind on most of the corners and then a headwind on the start/finish straight, which doesn’t make it easy for the drivers.
“Tonight, there will be quite a lot of work for us to do to understand why we’ve struggled on the Softs – I think that’s going to be the key for us going into tomorrow.”
