Helmut Marko recently labeled AlphaTauri new recruit Nyck de Vries as the team's new leader, but incumbent Yuki Tsunoda disagrees, and says whoever is "faster" will lead the Faenza-based squad.
Red Bull has opted to replace Alpine-bound Pierre Gasly with de Vries who put himself on the map thanks to his remarkable top-ten finish in last September's Italian Grand Prix at Monza, his maiden race in F1.
Although a rookie in F1, de Vries' age (27), past experiences and personality qualify him as a team leader in the eyes of Marko, at least relative to the 22-year-old Tsunoda.
©AlphaTauri
"Yuki is still young and doesn't have that experience technically, so Nyck can lead the team," said Marko, in the wake of de Vries' nomination as Gasly's replacement.
"We'll see how it goes next year in practice, but judging by his experiences and personality, Nyck should be the team leader."
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But Tsunoda believes it's the stopwatch that will ultimately decide who leads AlphaTauri in 2023.
"Well, the faster guy is going to be leading the team anyway," Tsunoda said. "So, I don’t care, team leader or not, I'm just focused on my job, lots of things to learn and improve.
"Obviously, I'm still more responsible than this year, because Pierre is going to leave. But still, I'm having strong confidence I can achieve that. I’ll be back stronger."
Despite having little to show for his efforts in the second part of his campaign this year, due in large part to the underperformance of the team's AT03, Tsunoda felt that his season had ended better that it had started in terms of his own development.
But the Japanese charger also acknowledged that he still needed to improve in several areas.
"I think overall for this season, I’ve always progressed every race pretty well, and I’m pretty happy about the shape I ended up this year," commented the Japanese charger.
"Obviously, I still need a lot of improvement, especially consistency, but at least I’m clear about the target for next year.
"Also a big thank you to Pierre. The last two years, without him I couldn’t achieve this much progress and I learned a lot of things from him. I’ll miss him, but it was a pleasure to work with him."
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