AlphaTauri Claim Beating Ferrari Was on the Cards for 2020 F1 Season

Same team, new name, AlphaTauri is the new branding from Toro Rosso, Red Bull’s sister team on the grid. The team’s technical chief, Jody Egginton, believes that they could have beaten Ferrari as he felt they had faster cars.

The disappointed technical chief admitted, ” Ultimately we felt that we should have been sixth in the championship, We think the car was good enough for it, but we didn’t deliver on that, if I am brutally honest.

“There a lot of things we could have stepped up with but unfortunately, we’ve not nailed that feat. On the flip side, the car was very competitive.

“We scored points at an awful lot of races. When we didn’t score points, we’ve been very clear why we didn’t score the points.

“We understand our car. But the fact of the matter is our performance at Imola when we had a reliability issue, and Portugal and Turkey, where we probably didn’t get it together as good as we could have done, it cost us,” he told Motorsport.

A long-awaited victory

AlphaTauri broke records in the 2020 season as they passed the 100 point mark for their first time in history. The obvious highlight of the season would be the iconic win at Monza.

Pierre Gasly took his first victory in his Formula 1 career. This marked the team’s second win in more than a decade. The last time this happened was when a certain German named Sebastian Vettel won at the same venue.

Gasly had some impressive performances through the 2020 season as he always finished in points while his teammate, Danil Kvyat, also helped the team gain some points, the most memorable being in Imola where he finished 4th.

AlphaTauri as good as Ferrari?

The team couldn’t match their best finish from last year where they finished 6th in the Constructors’ Championship, compared to this season as they finished in 7th place just 24 points behind Ferrari.

“With Ferrari, especially with Charles Leclerc, he’s driven fantastically. But we had a faster car and we didn’t manage to utilize it every weekend. They may not believe we had a faster car, but that’s my view,” he added.

 Praise for Pierre

Egginton also agreed that the car helped Gasly find his form, who was hell-bent on showing amazing signs of improvement throughout the season after being dropped from the Red Bull team.

“We scored more points than we’ve ever scored out of less races, and Pierre did a fantastic job. All the other metrics that we track as a team, we’re heading in the right direction.”

Egginton also said, “He’s learning, and he’s driving really well, and the way he uses the car and the way he races and his racecraft, it’s all coming on. We’re feeding off that and it’s motivating. He’s done really well.

“I can’t comment on the situation he went through at Red Bull, but he turned up with us and he’s got down to work. I think everyone appreciates that. He gives 110%, and you can’t really ask for more than that really.”

The clock is ticking for the new season to start, where testing begins in Bahrain from March 12-14th. The teams will come to know how far they have progressed.