In his final press conference as AlphaTauri team principal, Franz Tost made no bones about his disappointment with the team’s most recent pair of Formula 1 cars, and that he had set the wheels in motion for change. The Italian squad had enjoyed its best season at the end of the previous regulation set, claiming sixth in the 2021 constructors’ title with 142 points, but its first car under the new-for-2022 ruleset was comparatively unimpressive. Despite its deal with the parent Red Bull Racing squad to take as many transferable components as allowed under the regulations, AlphaTauri slipped to ninth in the championship as it fell towards the back of the field.
Tost, in one of his final acts as team principal, sought to bolster the aerodynamic department. So he tasked AlphaTauri’s HR department with finding “three, four or five senior aerodynamicists” to help turn the ship into more prosperous waters. With long gardening leave periods a hurdle in the Austrian’s desire for a more immediate turnaround, many of those aerodynamicists could not join the Faenza squad until 2023 had already
