AlphaTauri impressed with Tsunoda taking setbacks “in his stride”

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In the round-up: AlphaTauri’s technical director Jody Egginton praised how Yuki Tsunoda dealt with setbacks over the Bahrain Grand Prix weekend.

In brief

Tsunoda “on a very steep learning curve”

Egginton described how the team is helping rookie Tsunoda handle the “ups and downs” of Formula 1, as he gets used to the challenges of the midfield.

“His speed was not in doubt from F2. He deserved his shot. He’s come along. He’s on a very steep learning curve as any young driver is coming into the Formula 1 world. But he’s taken it step by step, he’s absorbing a lot of information and he is communicating well. And we’re understanding what he wants from the car and he’s working with his engineering team. He’s a quick learner.

“We had a few ups and downs [in Bahrain], he’s been very quick, we had a few little issues with the car and he’s taken that in stride. It’s frustrating for him as it is for everybody – if it wasn’t frustrating for him, that would be a worry, actually.

“But he bounced back from it. And so far it’s been really good. It’s really refreshing with the young guys in the team. AlphaTauri, Toro Rosso has got a history of working with young drivers and it’s just another one. I quite enjoy it, the challenge and the team’s good. Without being big-headed the team is good at working with young drivers, I think it’s fair to say that the record of the drivers that have been through the team highlights that the engineers are good.

“It’s great, it’s refreshing, it’s a challenge, but he’s delivering. We’re going to have ups and downs but he’s delivering and I think that’s important because we’re firmly in the midfield it appears.”

AlphaTauri factory heated by wine by-product

As part of Formula 1’s plan to become carbon neutral by 2030, AlphaTauri have been adapting their factory and working practices in preparation.

Changes include heating their Faenza facility with hot water from burning biomass accumulated as a side product of the local wine industry and moving the whole facility to a completely zero-tolerance policy on single-use plastics, including for staff and guests while on site.

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Comment of the day

After Alpine announced they will be bringing upgrades and new items to test to Imola, Stephen Crowsen says performances like their pace in Bahrain won’t go unnoticed for long with Fernando Alonso on the team.

Renault now employ Alonso. I’m not sure why he has such faith in their power unit, but he does. They’ve just finished with two years of Ricciardo telling them their power unit and car needed upgrading, and now they’ve employed someone I suspect is at least as demanding as Ricciardo, if not more demanding.

Maybe Renault were happy to ignore Ricciardo’s complaints, but I just can’t see them employing someone of Alonso’s prestige and then ignoring what he has to say.
@Drycrust

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Author information

Hazel Southwell
Hazel is a motorsport and automotive journalist with a particular interest in hybrid systems, electrification, batteries and new fuel technologies....

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27 comments on “AlphaTauri impressed with Tsunoda taking setbacks “in his stride””

  1. Coventry Climax
    13th April 2021, 0:16

    On this day in F1: That was crazy the way crazy should be: cars and drivers doing the job instead of ‘Mario-style’ silly gadgets and silly rules in an attempt to make it crazy all the time.

    1. No mention of the tyre strategy !

  2. Biggest news in Norris McDonald’s column — unless I’ve missed it elsewhere — is his implication that NBC has already decided not to renew their IndyCar broadcast contract, which is up at the end of the season. If true, that’s a big blow for IndyCar. NBC has been good to the series, and the direction of the race broadcasts have been much better than ABC’s for as long as I’ve watched them. Not surprising that NBC would be looking to cut IndyCar, though, as the ratings have never taken off.

    1. @markzastrow We’re lucky here in Canada as now Sportsnet has picked up the full series…a channel I already get with my satellite package. For the last few years I was only getting half the races on NBC, and the other half needed to be streamed which I didn’t bother doing. I’m surprised Norris, being Canadian and writing for Wheels.ca which is affiliated with the Toronto Star, didn’t mention the Sportsnet deal since has been known for over a week and his article is dated April 12. Perhaps he had a deadline to get the article in and wasn’t aware of the Sportsnet deal at the time. I’m chuffed to have it. At the same time I won’t assume the deal is permanent with Sportsnet as things seem to change on a dime at times, and Penske will be ‘shopping it’ as Norris says. But for now…yay!! Had been so used to always having the coverage it got depressing over the last few years and made it hard to keep my heart in it.

      Mark last year I had looked into it as I was considering streaming it, and I think you might be able to get away with about 10 bucks a month to do so if that works for you after this year and you find it the only way to get access.

      1. @robbie Thanks, great to hear that, indeed! I just hope that if NBC does cut IndyCar loose, whichever US network picks it up hires a broadcast director at least as good as NBC’s. I always felt the ABC/ESPN broadcasts were pretty rough; the director was always missing battles and none of the commentators seemed to have a handle on fuel or tyre strategies. Even the NBC coverage seemed to suffer last year in the latter regard when Jon Beekhuis was cut loose.

        McDonald’s suggestion about IndyCar selling the rights to the 500 and then buying time on another network doesn’t sound so bad. I wonder if IMS Productions would ever look at bringing the broadcast in-house, like FOM, to produce a proper world feed. I’m sure the outlay would be high, but if Penske can pour money into renovating IMS the way he has, it doesn’t seem impossible…

  3. Jack (@jackisthestig)
    13th April 2021, 0:39

    That picture of Senna and Mansell at Jerez reminds me of Clive James’ narration of the Season Review. “Senna was so moved by his victory that he spoke”.

    1. Broccoliface
      13th April 2021, 4:25

      The 82, 84 and 86 reviews are amazing because of him. I watched them a few weeks back before YT deleted their bootleg uploads. I started following in 1996, but i was laughing through all 9 hours of that 80’s narration.

  4. RE CoTD:

    As much as love Fernando, his faith has been misplaced before, with Honda in particular. However, one would hope he has learned from that. However, I dont think the power unit is the big issue. I remember reading a story last year about how, bar Ferrari, all the engines were more or less converging, even more so this year. The Renault/Alpine chassis isn’t the best, the Mclaren were consistently better with the same PU last year.

    I just hope, for his sake, they’re putting all their effort into 22. They really need to focus on getting the chassis-PU combination right. Under the years of Cyril’s stewardship, they never quite made the jump in performance, sure they improved from time to time, but considering their “works” status, larger strides should have been achieved. I guess Luca De Meo recognised that the previous structure wasnt working at level that is required to win races? Hence the shake up. It will be interesting to see how all this plays out. As much I believed that the previous structure needed to change, I am sceptical of the current one.

    .

    1. My feeling is that Renault/Alpine have been counting on the field coming back towards them once budget caps bite rather than them making any genuine efforts to mover forwards towards them.

      Since 2014, they have made incredibly slow progress and for the most part absolutely refused to develop any “party mode” to aid qualifying and instead have relied upon the FIA introducing regulations to ban them. Every time Cyril was asked about the future he homed in on budget and the fact that budget caps would aid the closing up of the field and not once did he, or anyone from the team, speak about innovation & development in any terms that inspired confidence.

      Good for them in sticking to their guns and not getting involved in my spending wars but it’s a huge gamble to assume that the front runners are going to be a whole heap slower in 2022/3.

  5. A film about Mosley? Who would possibly want to make or watch about a narcissistic megalomaniac besides Mosley himself?

    1. F1 fans, obviously. That’s a big part of what F1 is about.

      1. No, just Mosley

  6. moving the whole facility to a completely zero-tolerance policy on single-use plastics

    I applaud all these initiatives, including the small and apparently insignificant bits.
    But they might need extra staff to collect all the visor tear-offs ;)

    1. Almost the entire chassis of the car is made from single use plastics, as is much of the tooling used to make it.

  7. The Renault PU has been decently good and fast on straights in the recent past.

  8. Re Tsunoda: Expect him to finish as far as 4th this season.
    Re F3: Meanwhile I’m not a fan of the new format, we should see how it can start F3 with a bang.

  9. about the Women’s wildcard, Hazel are you saying you don’t want the preferential treatment because it is not enough of a preferential treatment?
    Some have tried to get more women into the mix. I’m not a fan of preferential treatment, obviously it is not fair but above all as an equalisation measure, preferential and equal don’t go along. Also it does make you question if you need equalisation in the first place. I reckon these series just need to become less niche to get broader appeal though that also means shunning what they are, niche. In the end of the day it should help the few esports girls out there, it is just a gamer thing.

    1. Hazel are you saying you don’t want the preferential treatment because it is not enough of a preferential treatment?

      No sure how you deduct that form @hazelsouthwell‘s tweet? @peartree
      I think her major concern is that a wildcard (or any other ‘make good’ measure) does nothing to correct the ‘toxic problems’ in eSports.

      1. *from

    2. I very clearly said my problem with it was that it did not address root causes of exclusion in esports (I followed up with a tweet of ways I feel this can be done better, for significant change) and that it not only failed to redress but erased women’s participation in the broader esports competition. Katherine Ormerod previously competed up to the pro draft level, just to pre-empt your bad faith follow-up about whether anyone could.

      I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in wasting time explaining diversity questions to you when you pay no attention at all.

      1. Getting all touchy feely about it isn`t going to help you either.

  10. @hazelsouthwell

    I have absolutely no interest whatsoever in wasting time explaining diversity questions to you when you pay no attention at all.

    was that aimed at me? I think I’m in agreement with you but that last statement made me confused. @coldfly I don’t think I said anything conflicting. I agree with hazel’s tweet. I was just trying to extend the subject. Open the conversation. For instances in snooker there are wch for women, there is no physiological reason to do so but the idea is to get more women into snooker but in the end it just helps the few women that were already trying to have a career in snooker. Ronnie says a lot of things… but one thing one has to agree with is ever since the top 64 got to play 1st rounds many players seem happy enough to just stay “on the tour”. I have not watcher Reanne Evans win 12 wchs but I have very much tuned in to watch her play the shoot out these psst couple seasons.
    Darts is similar to snooker, I think having their own wch equates to nothing.
    Darts is another example.

    1. @peartree,
      I think you ‘invited’ @hazelsouthwell‘s response (and mine) based on the question I quoted above.

      I’m still not sure why you formulated that question like that; not a single line in Hazel’s tweet could make you think that she was proposing that.
      It almost appeared that you were ridiculing her with a rhetorical question, hence the responses you got rather than answers.

      1. @coldfly not at all. The paradox of today’s society is coming up with topics taboos and other types of conversation without meaning to have an actual conversation. Keep it to yourself then. everything is condemnation. I genuinely was trying to discuss something but apparently as one should expect the solution for opression is to opress.
        What can I say besides what I meant to say. I repeat I don’t think preferential treatment works as intended, anywhere as I wanted to underline though more specifically as Hazel highlighted it separates the female gamers from the male gamers with the side effect of implying women don’t belong on the open category since there is one just for women.

        1. What can I say besides what I meant to say.

          I’ll repeat, @peartree, formulate your question differently.

          Don’t start a question with “are you saying” when it’s crystal clear that they were saying almost the opposite.

          1. @coldfly hazel said making a series just for women (aka preferential treatment) implied the normal series was just for men!

          2. I know what she said, @peartree, it’s linked above (and here it is again for you):

            Been thinking over why I dislike the Women’s Wildcard all day and:
            -it implies the other slots are reserved for men, which they aren’t – women have competed in F1 Esports before
            -it doesn’t fix the toxic problems for women in esports, just says ‘you can have this little bit’

            .
            And this statement by you is an absolute ridiculous question based on that tweet:

            Hazel are you saying you don’t want the preferential treatment because it is not enough of a preferential treatment?

            How ever did you come up with the ‘because it is not enough of a preferential treatment’ conclusion?
            You cannot deduct in any way, shape, or form from het tweet.

            I know it is difficult to admit you made a mistake, but stop digging any deeper FCOL.

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