“We cannot be fully satisfied” – AlphaTauri’s Claudio Balestri

The Austrian Grand Prix was somewhat disappointing for the Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda team, after their ultra-impressive performance in qualifying at the Red Bull Ring. Pierre Gasly brought home yet more points for the team in ninth whereas Yuki Tsunoda ended the race in twelfth.

Gasly and Tsunoda who started the race sixth and seventh respectively, both opted for a two-stop strategy as they started on the soft compound tyre. Unfortunately for both drivers the strategy didn’t go as planned, as they played catch-up throughout the race on the one-stoppers.

Gasly did well to work his way up to ninth to extend his points scoring run, whereas Tsunoda made his afternoon one to forget after crossing the white line on pit entry for both of his stops. This resulted in two separate five-second time penalties.

Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda Chief Engineer Claudio Balestri believes that it’s not possible to be happy with the result, considering where both drivers started the race. Nevertheless the team did get two more crucial points for their constructors tally.

“Today we tried our best in terms of strategy. Starting on soft tyres with both cars we decided to utilise a two-stop strategy, using the advantage of having two new sets of Hards, but at the end of the race we weren’t able to stay in front of the other cars on one-stop strategies. Pierre showed good pace today, especially in the last stint. He was able to catch the one stoppers and finish the race just behind them, without the yellow flag in turn four on the final lap Pierre would have also tried to overtake Leclerc.

“Yuki had a more difficult race, the two penalties didn’t help him and he unfortunately finished outside of the points. We cannot be fully satisfied with today because we started P6 and P7 on the grid and we finished with only one car in the points. However, we scored more points than our main competitors in the Constructors’ Championship battle which is a real positive.”