AlphaTauri technical director Jody Egginton has revealed the team's thinking behind a multi-stage programme of upgrades to the AT04 for 2023, with improvements to the car's floor a central focus.
A new floor was introduced in time for the Australian Grand Prix, but Yuki Tsunoda had to revert to the original version after he damaged the new components running wide during first practice.
Despite that early setback, Tsunoda benefitted from a chaotic end to the race to finish in the top ten and claim AlphaTauri's first constructors championship point of the season.
And it also meant that the team was able to learn from back-to-back comparison runs of the original and new parts on the same same track.
"We were in no doubt what we wanted to do," said Egginton. "We were looking to improve rear load at high rear ride heights in very basic sense." Egginton explained.
"The updates we're bringing now, amongst some other things they're intended to improve low-speed entry stability," he said. "If we've improved the rear load on the entry phase, if you've got more rear load, you've got more stability.
"Obviously low speed aero performance is a target in every team," he said. "And that's one of the targets we didn't quite nail pre-season.
"We're looking to make the car more stable on low-speed entry into corners so then the drivers can push harder at late entry, and there's performance to come from that.
"The changes we've made with floor fence camber - trying to control the strength and position of the floor vorticities and diffuser expansion and reducing tyre wake loss - it's all part of that.
"At the end of the day, put in very simple terms, we're looking to carry more load into the corner, so the driver can push harder.
"It gives us a balance advantage as well, if we can carry a bit more aero balance into the corner, at high stability," he commented.
"The floor is the big device, with the most authority to achieve that. That's why it's the first of probably five or six steps this year on floor development.
"It works on a large part of the things that we'd identified as possible weaknesses," he added.
"When we were developing the car over the winter, we set ourselves targets for development and other aspects. We achieved some of those targets and didn't achieve others.
"This update goes some way to addressing that. We started working on this package before we'd run the car, and it actually just provides all the benefits we need in the areas we've proven we've got to work on.
"So it's the first step. There's a lot more to come, but it is delivering in the areas where we think we've got to make the biggest gains to get closer to our rivals, so [we are] reasonably happy with that."
The team's engineering staff are still smarting from recent comments made by AlphaTauri principal Franz Tost that he no longer trusted their assurances after the new car failed to leave up to expectations in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia.
“Franz issued a statement that was probably taken a bit out of context and doesn’t show the exact picture," Egginton told motorsport-total.com.
“Ultimately Franz’s disappointment as team principal is that the car isn’t well established enough in midfield to be where we want to be. And he’s expressed that in a way.”
"He said a few things, but we’re going to keep going. That doesn’t change anything, everyone is still united in what we have to do.
“The reality is that in the first half of the season we have to try to overtake some teams to get into midfield,” he added. “So our strategy is to keep improving the car and hopefully early in the season we develop better than some of our rivals and catch them."
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