Franz Tost has bid farewell to Formula 1 in his familiar manner – he would have preferred not to have had a big farewell before the race in Abu Dhabi
After his last Formula 1 race as team boss of AlphaTauri, Franz Tost was not satisfied “because we were too stupid to choose the right strategy”, the Austrian was annoyed after Yuki Tsunoda only finished eighth in Abu Dhabi
Tost, who had previously been team principal of AlphaTauri and Toro Rosso since 2006, had his last race on the pit wall there. And he obviously suspected even before the start that it might not go to his satisfaction.
In an interview with Sky before the race, he explained in his familiar manner with regard to his big farewell a few minutes before the interview: “I just told them to stop fooling around, because we have a race now!”
Earlier in the weekend, Tost had repeatedly emphasized that his own farewell did not matter to him. And before the start on Sunday, he once again made it clear: “We have to concentrate on the race. That is much more important than anything else.”
His big farewell was therefore “basically pointless”, said Tost, who replied to the question of what his best moment in Formula 1 had been: “The moment today when we finished seventh [in the championship]!”
Tost trained two Red Bull world champions
“You can’t live from the past, you can only live from the present and the future. That’s why it’s important today that we show a good race, that we score eight points more than Williams and finish seventh. That’s all that counts,” said Tost.
As is well known, this did not work out, as Tsunoda’s eighth place was not enough to catch Williams in the constructors’ world championship. Tost’s greatest farewell wish after 18 years on the pit wall thus remained unfulfilled.
Instead, the Austrian received another big farewell present from Red Bull – in the truest sense of the word. “Mark Mateschitz has symbolically presented him with a model car. He will receive a complete car,” revealed Helmut Marko on Sky.
Franz Tost is getting a proper send off on the grid F1 AbuDhabiGP pic.twitter.com/LTu4tAHhSm
– Formula 1 (@F1) November 26, 2023
“He’s a hard bone with a soft core,” he says of his compatriot and recalls: “It wasn’t just the 18 [years] with us. He was [together] with Willi Weber before that, he was in motorsport with BMW and many others.”
“The extraordinary thing was that the two world champions we brought in went to school with him,” he recalls of Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen, who initially drove under Tost at Toro Rosso at the start of their respective careers.
Marko emphasizes: Tost remains available on call
“He said you need three years [to get used to Formula 1]. But if you give him a Vettel or Verstappen, I told him they don’t need three years and took them away from him earlier,” recalls Marko.
“The training was so good that they [were] able to fight for the world championship at Red Bull Racing straight away and that is a huge credit to him,” praises Marko and reveals that Tost is indeed the workhorse that he is always made out to be by the public.
“If you send him an email, [it] hasn’t even gone through yet, then the reply is already coming. And when you arrive at the airport, the first person to run up the escalator is Franz,” says Marko, who explains that he will miss “the quick, direct and sometimes quite harsh answers.”
Whereby “missing” is relative, because even if Tost himself, who is still fully involved with AlphaTauri until Christmas, emphasizes that he will not remain in the team as a consultant, Marko makes it clear that Tost will at least not retire completely.
“He will be on stand-by consulting for the years ’24, ’25. This means that if we need him, if the people at AlphaTauri need him, they can contact him. But he is free for all other activities that don’t clash with Formula 1,” explains Marko.
“And after 18 years, I think he deserves to finally be able to pursue his beloved sport of skiing as a Tyrolean,” he grins.