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What’s now AlphaTauri is Formula 1’s little team always liable to spring a surprise – not in the format of its cars, which tend to be fairly generic, but in its results.
Under its junior Red Bull guise, the Faenza outfit has spent most of its history somewhere in the midfield but even then there have been random podiums to add to that fairytale Sebastian Vettel victory from pole at Monza in 2008.
It was of course a victory emulated last year by Pierre Gasly and although that result owed a lot to the timing of the safety car and a catastrophic error on the Mercedes pitwall, the team did made great strides in 2020.
AlphaTauri halved its 2019 deficit to the identically-powered sister Red Bull car and could sometimes genuinely mix it with McLaren and Renault.
It did so, what’s more, with a very unfashionable-looking car, retaining the wide nose format that almost everyone else – including Red Bull – had abandoned.
The technical team, led by Jody Egginton, is very aware of the limitations of its resource and in the era of windtunnel restrictions isn’t about to go for anything radical.
It works around the hand-me-down components available from Red Bull but isn’t obliged to follow the parent team’s more ambitious philosophies.
So it would seem unlikely that AlphaTauri will be trying anything fundamentally new in the final year of this formula.
The development of last year’s car was nicely progressive and it was still responding by the end of the season. We should probably expect more of the same for the 2021 evolution of the car when it’s revealed on Friday.
What we do know is that – unlike Aston Martin –AlphaTauri will not be taking advantage of the token-free upgrade to 2020 rear suspensions available for those customer teams that were running the donor team’s 2019 suspensions last year. It prefers to stick with what is has and to concentrate development where it feels it is needed more – at the front end of the car.
If this grounded approach allows it to start the season where it left off last year, AlphaTauri is capable of more surprises. Especially if Honda delivers the goods in its final year of official participation.
Gasly has emerged as the driver he always looked capable of being before his difficult stint at the senior team – fast, feisty and determined.
And there is great excitement within the Red Bull group about the potential of rookie Yuki Tsunoda. Perhaps more excitement than any driver in the programme since Max Verstappen.
There could be more jack-in-the-box AlphaTauri surprises in store this year.
