Tost happy to hand over the reins to Mekies: "It's time"

Long-time AlphaTauri boss Franz Tost says he's looking forward to handing over the responsibility of running the team to current Ferrari sporting director Laurent Mekies at the end of the year.

Tost has been in charge at Faenza since he was appointed team principal of what was then Toro Rosso - formerly Minardi - at the end of 2005, making him one of the longest serving bosses in F1 history.

But last month AlphaTauri announced a major change in its management structure at the end of the year, which included Tost's departure.

• Read also: Rumours of Ricciardo/de Vries swap at AlphaTauri

Even before then, at the age of 67 Tost had been laying the ground for his imminent retirement. He insisted that he was looking to handing over the reins to a younger man.

“It’s time to go," he told the media in Miami last week. “I think this is the time where I will hand it over to some other people who can do a much better job than me."

As well as Mekies taking over Tost's role, the team has also appointed former FIA executive Peter Bayer to join the squad as CEO.

“It’s the correct way to do it," Tost commented. "I am more than looking forward to when Peter Bayer and Laurent Mekies will take over leading the team.”

Tost originally took over managing the team when it was bought by Red Bull co-founder Dietrich Mateschitz. While it's never finished higher than six in the constructors championship, AlphaTauri has a stellar record in developing new talent.

Sebastian Vettel, Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo all established themselves ion Formula 1 driving for the team, with Pierre Gasly and Daniil Kvyat among recent graduates and Yuki Tsunoda joining Nyck de Vries in the current line-up.

Tost was clearly proud of having brought in so many fresh drivers into the sport over the years, and hoped that this would continue under the new management going forward.

"When Dietrich Mateschitz decided to buy the Minardi team, he said one of the main pillars is to educate the young Red Bull drivers - and this is what the team did," Tost commented.

“Looking back, there were some very high-skilled drivers like Sebastian Vettel, then, of course, Verstappen," he said. "There are also some other drivers, they were really fast, like Carlos Sainz, like Gasly, Ricciardo, Daniel, and now Yuki.

"There are a couple of drivers, they really improved a lot in the time and they were in our team and they did a very professional job, they developed themselves and that’s good to see.”

However the flow of young drivers had dried up in recent years leaving AlphaTauri struggling to find new recruits of the same sort of calibre to which it had become accustomed.

When Gasly opted to move to Alpine for 2023, AlphaTauri turned to former Formula E champion and Mercedes protege Nyck de Vries to plug the gap.

So far it's not worked out, with de Vries yet to score a point or finish in the top ten, and the team itself in ninth place (penultimate position) in the current constructors championship.

The death of Mateschitz last year has also led to speculation as to what the new management at Red Bull will decide to do with the junior squad.

As well as rumours of a sell-off, it's been suggested that they will be required to leave their historic base in Italy to move to Milton Keynes and cut costs by consolidating operations with the senior Red Bull team.

But the appointment of Mekies and Bayer suggests that the decision had been made to honour Mateschitz's commitment to AlphaTauri and to F1 at least in the medium term.

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