“No negative energy” at AlphaTauri F1 despite Tost criticism

The Faenza-based team admitted it had missed some of its development targets to start the 2023 season and has been stuck near the back of the grid across the first three races.

After failing to score in the first two rounds, Tsunoda took a solitary point in a chaotic Australian Grand Prix, leaving AlphaTauri alongside Williams at the bottom of the table.

In a tight midfield the team is aware it needs to make several steps to be in contention for better results throughout the 2023 development race.

Its rough start prompted team principal Tost to exclaim he “doesn’t trust” his engineers anymore after the team failed to make significant progress compared to 2022.

But according to Tsunoda the team is still in good spirits even if it is disappointed with its start.

“Inside the team obviously, we’re not happy about performance, but at least we are staying always positive,” Tsunoda said when asked about Tost’s comments by Motorsport.com.

“We’re quite happy with what we’ve done on the track side, we’ve almost extracted 100% of the performance from the car, which is the most important. And we’re clear on what direction we have to take for the development side as well.

“As a track engineering side, we just focus to give all of the 100% effort to make a car better and as a development side in Faenza they know what they have to do.

“As a team it’s good that we’re facing the same direction, so I’m still feeling positive. We always aim for the points. I don’t feel any negative energy from the team.”

Tsunoda’s new team-mate Nyck de Vries also felt the atmosphere in the team was still positive and is hopeful the team can develop its way out of its current position.

“The vibe in the team is really good,” he said. “But we are competitive and we want to be further up the grid.”

“We obviously would have hoped and liked that we were a bit more ahead and in the fight for points, but hopefully during the course of the season we can get ourselves in that place.”