The third of our end-of-year reviews of how all ten F1 teams fared in 2023, with a look at AlphaTauri and drivers Yuki Tsunoda, Daniel Ricciardo, Liam Lawson and Nyck de Vries.
The third of our end-of-year reviews of how all ten F1 teams fared in 2023, with a look at AlphaTauri and drivers Yuki Tsunoda, Daniel Ricciardo, Liam Lawson and Nyck de Vries.
Stormy times for Red Bull's kid sister
The team picture
- Constructors standing: P8, 25 points
It's been an unsettled season for AlphaTauri, beginning with the news that its longtime team principal of 18 years standing, Franz Tost, was to leave at the end of the year, to be replaced by former Ferrari race director Laurent Mekies in 2024. On top of that, the entire raison d'etre of the team as Red Bull's talent development squad seemed to have been shelved in the wake of Dieter Mateschitz passing away in 2022. Maybe that explains why the team was hopelessly moribund at the start of the year, with just three points from the first 14 races of the season.
Added to that was an unfortunate revolving door in the cockpit of the team's second car. They started with Nyck de Vries but soon showed signs of buyer's remorse for snapping up the former Formula E champion on the basis of a single stand-in drive for Williams at Monza in 2022. They dropped him and recalled Daniel Ricciardo, only for the Aussie to injure his hand forcing them to call up junior driver Liam Lawson as a stand-in for five races. Meanwhile Yuki Tsunoda kept plugging away. At least the technical team showed signs of steady progress resulting in a surprisingly strong end to the season in the final five races.
The driver line-up
- Yuki Tsunoda: P14, 17 points
- Daniel Ricciardo: P17, 6 points
- Liam Lawson: P20, 2 points
- Nyck de Vries: P22, 0 points
AlphaTauri was the only team to change its driver line-up over the course of 2023, party by choice (dropping Nyck de Vries for Daniel Ricciardo) and partly by necessity (Liam Lawson substituting for the injured Ricciardo). The only constant was Yuki Tsunoda, so it's no surprise that he is top of the pile having competed in all 22 race weekends (although he failed to take the start in Italy). To give that context, his average was 0.77 points per race competed in, compared to 0.85 for Ricciardo and 0.40 for Lawson. And 0.0 for de Vries, obviously.
Tsunoda out-performed de Vries eight times in both qualifying and race performances during their ten races together. He also had the upper hand over Ricciardo with a 4-3 margin in their seven races as team mates. Surprisingly, Tsunoda's worst slump came when Lawson was filling in, with the Kimi finishing ahead of him in three qualifying occasions out of five, and in three of the four races they competed in (not including Italy, which Tsunoda did not start).
Tsunoda can certainly claim credit for keeping the show on the road among all the turmoil in the sister car and he deserves a new run in 2024. It's perhaps more surprising that Ricciardo will stay on alongside him while Lawson is cast out in the cold. The decision has the impression of something that had already been signed and sealed even before Lawson got to show what he could do. Maybe another opportunity will arise for the talented junior to race again next year.
How 2024 is looking for AlphaTauri
For one thing, we know that AlphaTauri won't be the name on the team's garage when we head to Bahrain in 2024. At time of writing we don't know what the new brand will actually be, but the chopping and changing of team identity, drivers and principal doesn't exactly bode well. It underlines the degree to which the parent Red Bull company doesn't seem to have a clear idea what it's doing with the squad, which seems superfluous to requirements now that the main team is flying so very, very high.
However the arrival of the highly rated Mekies and the way the team finally found its footing with upgrades in the final races of 2023 suggests a more positive outlook for them next season. They should certainly do a lot better than scraping along at the bottom again for much of the season. We're not expecting them to be at the top of the midfield teams, but on the other hand we saw stranger things happen in 2023 with Aston Martin and McLaren, so don't rule it out.
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