AlphaTauri’s Claudio Balestri: “Hopefully we can fight for points”

Scuderia AlphaTauri are looking to end their race weekend on a high as they aim for both drivers to finish in the points as Yuki Tsunoda and Pierre Gasly qualify either side of the top ten.

After a difficult start to the day in practice three with both drivers finishing lower down the grid, the team were going to need a very good performance in qualifying to improve on their current position which they were able to achieve as Tsunoda qualified in ninth place and Pierre Galsy in eleventh place ahead of the Dutch Grand Prix.

AlphaTauri’s Chief Engineer for Vehicle Performance Claudio Balestri spoke after qualifying on a tough weekend for the team so far. Balestri admitted that their overall aim was to improve tyre management and the overall performance of the car heading into Saturday. This didn’t go to plan as the team wanted which lead to more set up changes before qualifying. After a more positive result, Balestri is hoping that the team can fight it out for points on Sunday.

“After Friday’s session we were not really satisfied by our performance as we knew there was margin to improve our package, so for this reason we decided to change the setups overnight. The aim was to try to improve the management of the tyres and the overall performance, we were especially struggling in the corners. In high-speed corners we were sliding and in Sector 1 we were slower than our competitors.”

“This morning, in FP3 we didn’t fully solve our main limitations and were not happy with our performance, so we made further changes to our setups before Quali and it paid off. At the end of day, we can be pleased with Yuki starting tomorrow in P9 and Pierre in P11. Now we are looking forward to the race, it will be very important to manage the tyres and to ensure we control the degradation, and if we do this well then hopefully we can fight for points.”