For a long time, AlphaTauri was in last place in the world championship, but with a few updates in the second half of the season, they managed to climb to eighth place
For a long time, AlphaTauri was in last place in the Constructors’ Championship, but with some upgrades in the second half of the season, the Italian team managed to turn things around and finish the 2023 Formula 1 season in eighth place.
The final phase of the AT04 was particularly strong, almost knocking Williams out of seventh place, but at least the team was able to overtake its rivals Haas and Alfa Romeo and pass on the red lantern.
After a weak start to the season, they had held the red lantern for a long time. Before the season, the engineers had promised team boss Franz Tost a better result, but the performance was not there. Tost drew the consequences and said publicly that he no longer trusted the engineers – in the end, heads even rolled.
After 14 races of the season, AlphaTauri had scored just three meagre points, which went to Yuki Tsunoda, who had finished tenth three times. Team-mate Nyck de Vries, on the other hand, had scored no points, so the Dutchman was dropped from the team.
Red Bull put Daniel Ricciardo in the car, but he only drove two races until he broke his hand in practice at Zandvoort and was spontaneously replaced by Liam Lawson. The Dutchman settled in well and drove to his best result of the season to date in Singapore with ninth place – the result of an extensive upgrade by the team
AlphaTauri didn’t let up until the end of the season and continued to develop. They even brought a new underbody to the season finale in Abu Dhabi. As a result, AlphaTauri scored four points in the last five races and secured additional points with the fastest lap in Austin and a sixth place in the Sao Paulo sprint race.
The things AlphaTauri did during the season that made the Italians one of the positives in the later races.
