Sky F1 commentator and former Aston Martin strategist Bernie Collins has suggested that AlphaTauri should have paired Daniel Ricciardo with Red Bull reserve Liam Lawson rather than with Yuki Tsunoda for 2024.
Lawson filled in for Daniel Ricciardo after the Australian fractured his left hand in a practice crash at the Dutch Grand Prix.
The Kiwi’s five-race stint with AlphaTauri impressed many, and he was seen as a potential contender for a permanent seat with te Faenza-based outfit for 2024.
However, the team opted to retain Yuki Tsunoda as Ricciardo's teammate, and Lawson was left disappointed.
Collins believes AlphaTauri made a mistake by not promoting Lawson, arguing that the New Zealander would have brought fresh perspective and energy to the team.
“I interviewed him on the grid in Zandvoort,” Collins told Speedcafe on an episode of the KTM Summer Grill.
“That was his first race in the car and I have never seen anyone so calm – much calmer than I would be in that situation.
“I think they’d had a wet weekend up to that point, and it was the first laps he was going to do on dry tyres, massively different fuel load to what he’d run… just so much stuff going on, your mind’s racing. But he was so calm.”
Unfortunately, Lawson's hopes of securing a full-time Formula 1 seat with AlphaTauri were dashed as he was informed of his exclusion from the 2024 driver lineup during the Singapore Grand Prix weekend, where he delivered the team's best performance of the season to that point.
This decision came as a surprise to many, as the 22-year-old Red Bull reserve seemed like an ideal candidate for AlphaTauri's long-standing tradition of nurturing young talent.
The team has long been a steppingstone for Red Bull's young drivers, providing them with an opportunity to hone their skills at the highest level before moving up the ranks.
However, the team took on a new direction last summer with the addition of Ricciardo – a veteran of 239 Grands Prix starts – to its lineup.
The presence of Ricciardo and Tsunoda, coupled with the outfit’s management restructuring and identity change signals a new era for the team, one during which it aims to move away from being just a feeder outfit for Red Bull and to establish itself as a competitive force in its own right.
©AlphaTauri
While this strategic shift is understandable, Collins argues that retaining Tsunoda and overlooking Lawson was a missed opportunity to inject fresh talent and energy into the team.
“It’s a pity in F1 that some things are led by sponsors, some things are led by dealings, whatever, but on pure performance, he should be in a car, he should be in a seat,” Collins argued.
“And arguably, that should have been the AlphaTauri seat with Daniel Ricciardo because you would have a very strong line-up of a young guy that’s clearly very good, and Ricciardo who has very strong pace and a lot of experience.
“That would work really well, you’d imagine, for the AlphaTauri team, that mix. That’s not happened, which is a pity.
“What’s going to be very interesting going forward now is what Liam’s able to do over the next season. [He] needs to be in a strong position to step into that car.
“We don’t know what happened with the Williams seat if it was offered to him, and then he said he wanted to stay in the Red Bull family. We don’t know the answers to those questions.
“But you would like to think that other team managers are sitting, looking at his performance, going ‘to get in a car that quickly is no mean feat’.
“So yeah, I totally think he deserves that spot on the grid, and it’s a bit of a pity that he’s missed it.
“But he has given himself one fantastic interview. He cannot do any better than he did.”
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