Not taking Red Bull F1 suspension in 2023 was an “error”

AlphaTauri started the season uncompetitive but launched a barrage of incremental floor updates that brought the AT04 back into the midfield battle. 

In conjunction, it took the Red Bull RB19’s rear suspension from Singapore onwards, which enhanced the car’s rear stability and helped exploit its floor progress. 

It allowed drivers Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo to make a late lunge in the championship, finishing just shy of Williams in eighth after having languished at the bottom for the majority of the season. 

While AlphaTauri’s emphatic floor development attracted attention from its rivals, its suspension choices also played a part in its progress and CEO Bayer says not having taken Red Bull’s rear suspension earlier was an “error”. 

“The initial decision to go our own way with those critical parts simply was an error, and the people [who made the decision] back then are not with us anymore,” Bayer told Motorsport.com. 

“I guess engineers always have plenty of arguments why you should do certain things, but I think everybody in the paddock understood now that with this new regulation change and the new downforce pattern, which is so reliant on the floor, the suspension is the next most important thing.

“You’ve got the floor and then you’ve got the suspension. If those two don’t work together, you might as well not go out.” 

When asked if there was any sense in trying to be smarter than Red Bull, the dominant force in the past two seasons, Bayer grinned: “I guess that’s the big learning for us for this year, yeah. 

“But at the same time, what is tricky for us as a customer is you get a piece, but you have to make that piece work and it’s very difficult.  

“Look at some other teams who have hired ex-Red Bull aerodynamicists and engineers, they made some quick gains but then constant development is not as easy as it looks.  

“We’ve seen in Singapore something seemed to work slightly better, but we weren’t really sure. And that’s one of the key aspects of [technical director] Jody [Egginton’s] team, they put a lot of effort into understanding the global concept.  

“How can it be actually possible that this [Red Bull] car is so stable, that it has this ability in slow corners, fast corners, straight-line speed? And that’s where Jody and the guys sort of…