From Faenza to the UK: AlphaTauri's bold move for enhanced F1 competitiveness
Jul.5 - AlphaTauri's new CEO has admitted the Faenza based team will work much more closely with owner Red Bull from 2024.
Franz Tost, AlphaTauri's boss since the beginning as Toro Rosso, is stepping down at the end of the year to hand over to Peter Bayer - CEO - and the similarly-incoming team principal Laurent Mekies.
"I'm really looking forward to it," Bayer, a top FIA official at present, told Servus TV.
"It's an ideal time. Management changes have also been made at Red Bull which frees up space for Laurent and myself.
"We are good friends," he said of Frenchman Mekies, whose current post is at Ferrari. "When I was at the FIA, Laurent was safety director," Bayer added.
"We've always gotten along very well. We exchanged views on how life could be shaped in Italy."
It is now clear that part of the AlphaTauri shakeup for 2024 is to give up the policy of designing and manufacturing most parts themselves and instead move much more closely to the technical solutions at parent team Red Bull Racing.
"It's about finding synergies," Bayer confirms.
"We can't just copy the car, of course, because the FIA will find out about it relatively quickly. However, we are allowed to obtain many parts from Red Bull.
"But we still have to develop the central points such as the aerodynamics ourselves."
Some have regarded AlphaTauri is effectively a Red Bull 'B' team for many years, but Bayer says "synergies" were in fact never implemented effectively.
"I believe synergies have to be exploited," he said, "but we haven't had that yet. It's also about sponsors and employees.
"We can also try to be competitive for talented engineers and give them opportunities," added Bayer, confirming the plan that elements of the team will move to the UK whilst AlphaTauri also retains its Faenza HQ.
He said one advantage of his past association with the FIA is that he was central to the implementation of the budget cap.
"Many teams are struggling with the cost cap," said Bayer. "I managed the project at the FIA and kept apologising to the teams," he smiled.
"But we can now see much that makes a difference to the sponsors. Politics is also becoming more and more important, so it will be Laurent taking care of the racing and I will take care of the business.
"That's putting it simply, but it makes sense to do it like that."
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