Pierre Gasly led the line for AlphaTauri in 2022, but team-mate Yuki Tsunoda closed the gap considerably in his second season in Formula 1 during what proved to be an erratic and trying season for the Red Bull-owned team.
In qualifying, Gasly had the advantage 7-5 in dry conditions where a fair comparison could be made. This equated to an average advantage of a tenth of a second. That was a marked improvement for Tsunoda, who had only outqualified Gasly in a straight fight in the dry once last year, with an average deficit of over half a second.
In the races, Gasly was more often the stronger performer – the lead AlphaTauri driver when both finished 10 times compared to Tsunoda six times. But for both, results were hard to come given AlphaTauri’s struggles with the tricky AT03 and the reliability and operational misfortunes that cost it some big results.
Gasly had come into 2022 with his stock as high as it’s ever been after two-and-a-half strong years since being dropped by Red Bull Racing. But while he’d thrived in the previous generation of AlphaTauri/Toro Rosso machinery, which evolved to produce not only good performance but also the rear-end stability that gave him the confidence to attack the corner entries, things were more difficult this year.
AlphaTauri was disappointed with its aerodynamic development rate in 2022, meaning it made less progress on mitigating the generic weaknesses of this new type of F1 car than others – including the weaker front end in slower corners. Gasly often complained about corner-entry understeer that transitioned into oversteer later in the corner, with the struggle to achieve the kind of through-corner balance needed to excel.
At times, Tsunoda coped better with this – even though he’s no lover of understeer himself. Certainly, Gasly was only sporadically able to express himself behind the wheel given his struggle to adapt to the characteristics of a car that didn’t give him the entry stability and positive rotation characteristics he thrives with.
Tsunoda had more of an issue producing consistent pace across race stints. He often spoke of the need to improve his management of races and there were grands prix – Austria and Hungary, for example – where he struggled with tyre management and seemed at a loss to explain his lack of race pace.
Gasly delivered AlphaTauri’s best result of the year – fifth place in Azerbaijan. It’s typical of AlphaTauri’s season that this was on a weekend when Tsunoda should have been sixth, only to suffer a DRS problem that led to a black-and-orange flag for running repairs.
But Gasly’s high point really should have been Monaco. In some ways, it was his own personal best given he wasn’t at fault for the pitwall error in qualifying that led to him being unable to start his final Q2 lap after a red-flag restart because the team didn’t get him into the queue early enough.
Without that, he had the pace to have been best-of-the-rest behind Ferrari and Red Bull. Instead, he fell in Q1 and produced a fine drive after an early switch to slicks that yielded an ignored 11th place.
That was just one of a number of missed opportunities, with an MGU-K failure in Bahrain costing points, prodigious in Miami going unrewarded after he was hit by Fernando Alonso and a mistimed pitstop in Singapore denying him good results. Sometimes, the AlphaTauri simply didn’t have the pace for the top 10, with the upshot that he only managed six points finishes.
Gasly also appeared to lose his edge in the closing stages of the year once his deal to move to Alpine was done, although he was also grappling with a car that hadn’t kept up with the development rate of its midfield rivals. By the end of the season, he had the air of a man relieved to be moving on despite the close connection he feels with the team.
Tsunoda managed just four points finishes, with his best seventh at Imola. He also had more than his fair share of misfortune while in the mix for points.
But while he cut back on the errors of 2021, they still happened. In Canada, he shunted coming out of the pits and at Silverstone he clattered into Gasly while attempting to pass him – in the process shedding debris that also hobbled Red Bull stablemate Max Verstappen. He also crashed after pitting in Singapore, albeit after the team called him and Gasly in for slicks prematurely.
Gasly’s departure is a loss for AlphaTauri, but the hope is that Tsunoda can take another step heading into his third season. He’s regarded by the team as a driver who has serious pace – as he has sporadically shown in qualifying and occasionally in races – but the key question is whether he can add consistency to his game and produce the relentless focus needed to step into Gasly’s shoes in 2023.
Keyword: The much closer F1 team-mate duel that went to waste in 2022