A complicated weekend for AlphaTauri in Montreal

Last weekend, on the streets of Baku, AlphaTauri achieved its best performance of the season. Pierre Gasly brought home 10 points with a 5th place finish in Azerbaijan, while Yuki Tsunoda, in 13th place, was well positioned to score points before his DRS problem.

A very encouraging performance for the rest of the season. Yes, but here’s the thing, the very positive momentum didn’t last more than a week. This weekend for the Canadian Grand Prix, the Faenza team had initially nourished a lot of hope following the free practice sessions. But the qualifying session then put a stop to it, with Gasly being eliminated in Q1 and Tsunoda starting last anyway due to changes on his engine.

Various fates at AlphaTauri

The Japanese driver didn’t see the checkered flag of the race. When exiting the pits, he simply went straight into the wall. It was a mistake that could have easily been avoided. « I’ve already been to the garage to apologize to the whole team,” Tsunoda said just after the race. « I just pushed too hard coming out of the pits and unfortunately went into the wall. The pace was good and we had a nice comeback before that, even though it’s difficult to overtake. I’m disappointed with how it ended. »

On his side, Gasly, who finishes 14th, indicated that the AT03 was just lacking in pace this Sunday. We were simply too slow, so it wasn’t an incredible day. Starting from the back, we had chosen a different strategy, so we pitted earlier, but it didn’t make a difference. We struggled a lot with grip, the car was sliding a lot in these conditions, and we simply didn’t have the pace to fight in the top 10.

After a promising pace shown in Baku, Montreal was painful. However, the test sessions lead to believe that the car is showing real progress and surely has good potential when conditions are favorable.