Jody Egginton says Scuderia AlphaTauri have a lot of data to go through ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix after failing to extract as much performance from their AT04 as they had hoped they would during the Australian Grand Prix weekend.
At the third time of asking, the team finally scored their first top ten finish of the season thanks to a tenth place for Yuki Tsunoda, although team-mate Nyck de Vries remains without a point leaving Albert Park after being caught up in an incident with Williams Racing’s Logan Sargeant on the chaotic lap fifty-seven restart.
Egginton, the Technical Director at AlphaTauri, admitted the AT04 struggled for pace down the straights in Australia, and it also was hard work for the drivers to get the three Pirelli dry weather compounds in the right window.
He praised the drivers for doing everything they could to maximise their result, but Egginton says the team still have work to do to unlock the AT04’s potential and bring both Tsunoda and de Vries into regular top ten contention.
“It was a very difficult race for us,” said Egginton. “Both drivers pushed hard to extract all they could from the package, but we couldn’t manage to get the cars moving forward as required.
“The pace of the car was not there on all compounds, and we struggled for straight-line speed, as such, we weren’t able to attack nor hold position in some phases of the race.
“We leave Melbourne with a lot of data to go through and a lot of work ahead of us in order to be best prepared for Baku.”
AlphaTauri now have four weeks to go through that data and come back stronger for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix at the Baku City Circuit across the final weekend of April.