Jody Egginton, Technical Director at Scuderia AlphaTauri believes that, despite not getting into the points, the race pace shown in Pierre Gasly‘s race was promising, following his pitlane start on Sunday.
Gasly was set to start the race from nineteenth on the grid after getting a lap time deleted, but instead used the opportunity to tactically add some extra Power Unit components to his car, dropping him back just one place. The Frenchman would start the race at the Hungaroring from the pit-lane, then recover to twelfth place in the race. Meanwhile, Yuki Tsunoda started the race from sixteenth after also being knocked out of Qualifying One; but after suffering with balance and grip (as well as a mid-race spin), the Japanese driver placed nineteenth overall in the race.
Regardless of the result, Egginton believes there are takeaways from the weekend:
“We had mixed fortunes as a team today. Pierre drove a very strong race, from a pitlane start, making good use of the soft and medium compounds to come home 12th. Unfortunately, Yuki had a far more difficult race, struggling with grip and balance in every stint and generally not being happy with his car.
“Although no issue was evident from the telemetry, we need to conduct an investigation to get to the bottom of this.”
AlphaTauri brought upgrades to their car in France, but Tsunoda claims that they are not ‘paying off’. Egginton did, however, explain that the Hungarian Grand Prix taught the team more about the update, which will also come with a lot of data.
“Looking at the bigger picture, although we have not achieved the target of getting back to scoring points again here in Hungary, the race pace shown today is positive and with a better starting position we could have potentially delivered points with Pierre, which is a good sign.
“Equally as important though is the amount we have learned about the upgrade here which, when combined with the next updates, will hopefully move us forward another step.
“We now have a week back at base focused on analysis from this event and preparations for the next Grand Prix before everyone heads off for a well-earned break, ahead of the second half of the season, which we are all looking forward to.”
