Jody Egginton believed Scuderia AlphaTauri deserved to take more than just a solitary point away from the Singapore Grand Prix on Sunday, with questionable strategy decisions meaning they dropped down the order.
Having started with both Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda inside the top ten and with weather conditions uncertain following a heavy downpour that saw the race delayed by over an hour, the team scored only a tenth-place finish on Sunday thanks to Gasly, while Tsunoda crashed out.
Egginton, the Technical Director at AlphaTauri, believes the decision from the pit wall to pit both drivers for dry tyres came too early, and it meant Gasly fell behind Daniel Ricciardo, Lance Stroll and Sebastian Vettel in the final result.
Tsunoda crashed out at turn ten not long after making his own pit stop, meaning the potential double points finish turned into just a single point and a drop to ninth place in the Constructors’ Championship behind the Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant F1 Team.
“After all of the hard work put in by the team and drivers over the weekend, we have failed to maximise the opportunity to score good points with both cars tonight,” said Egginton. “This is due to our engineering team committing too early to the switch to dry tyres.
“This has cost track position for both drivers, with Yuki also unfortunately sliding off track soon after. This meant we have only got one car to the flag and come away with far less points than we should have.
“As a team we will now review the race in detail to understand the areas for improvement and take onboard the required learning to be better able to exploit such chances next time, as we have missed a very good opportunity tonight, which we needed to grab with both hands.”
