“I no longer trust my engineers” controversy explained by AlphaTauri F1 team boss Franz Tost
The retiring Franz Tost caused a stir earlier this year when, in typically blunt fashion, he claimed “I no longer trust me engineers”.
Tost is stepping down from AlphaTauri team principal, having led the team for 18 years, before the 2024 F1 season.
His fantastically forthright views were never in better evidence that when he publicly criticised his AlphaTauri engineers after failing to score a point in the season-opener in Bahrain.
He has now explained how his staff received those words: “The engineers whom I meant; they understood it.
“I must tell you the background story.
“Our car last year was not competitive. Then I said we have to do something, because I cannot accept that we are rolling around in the back of the field, I want to be at least in the front part of the midfield.
“‘Yeah, yeah. We are working very hard and we have solutions. We know exactly what we have to do.’
“I visited them at the aero department. They told me figures and they said ‘the car will be fantastic. Really good performance, very good figures in CFT, as well as in the wind tunnel, and blah blah blah.’
“Then we came to Bahrain and I did not need to wait for the race. I knew already after the test that we are nowhere.
“Then I got upset and I said to them, ‘what's going on?’
“‘Oh, you know, there's coming an upgrade.’
“I said, ‘I don't care about an upgrade. This car must perform well.’
“Then, in your press conference, I was asked about this and I said, ‘I don't trust them anymore.’
“If I don't trust anymore the people, then they are out. This was the case.
“We changed them and brought in some new people, so we have now hopefully a good team in the aero department.
“I must say, all the upgrades they brought this year so far worked acceptably.”
AlphaTauri also replaced the underperforming Nyck de Vries with Daniel Ricciardo, who will stay alongside Yuki Tsunoda next year.
AlphaTauri eventually finished eighth in the F1 constructors’ championship.
“My leading style is totally easy,” insisted Tost.
“I sit together with the people, we discuss a topic, we make a decision, but then we must go through this.
“What I do not like is to decide something and then afterwards to change it, to go another direction.
“You must do it. I must say that, at the beginning, we had sometimes small troubles, but people then got used to me and we then had fantastic cooperation.”
