AlphaTauri gets a 0 grade and only brags about self-sabotage plan in F1 2022

27 points in 11 races, with a fifth place finish completely off the mark as the best result. That, and only that, is what AlphaTauri is clinging to for the 2022 Formula 1 season. Compared to last year, at this very point in the championship, the Italian team already had 68 points, including a podium finish to their account - a 3rd place by Pierre Gasly in Azerbaijan. So what happened to the team from Faenza?

With no updates, crucial errors in strategy and operations, and, additionally, breakage problems, AlphaTauri has turned into a vast expanse of nothing in F1 2022. The impression is that the team headed by Franz Tost has only one specialty: playing against itself.

It's no exaggeration: AlphaTauri is AlphaTauri's main obstacle this year. And to attest to this, all it takes is a little trip back in time, going over the team's performance in 2022 race by race. Starting, of course, in Bahrain: while Yuki Tsunoda performed well and finished eighth, an energy recovery engine (ERS) problem on lap 46 ended Pierre Gasly's race. It also wrecked the Frenchman's car, which went up in flames as a result of his retirement.

In the next round, in Jeddah, Tsunoda suffered from hydraulic problems all weekend, and even before the race, on the exit lap from the pits to the grid, he had to abandon because of his engine. In Australia, the result was worse than expected, with only one point scored by Gasly. In Imola, Guanyu Zhou hit the Frenchman's car during the sprint race, which compromised the rest of his weekend, while the Japanese driver got a good 7th place.

In Miami, Gasly broke down once again, again while in the scoring zone, while Tsunoda complained of a lack of grip, leaving zeroed out. In Spain, tragedy struck even before the race: the Frenchman suffered another crash, this time in free practice, and rode with a car that was visibly far from ideal. The Japanese driver, in turn, had yet another underwhelming performance and demonstrated a hot temper, insinuating that he and his teammate were not given the same equipment.

On the Monaco circuit, where qualifying is a priority, AlphaTauri made a major strategic error - and a miscalculation, too, it must be said - and caused Gasly to crash in Q1 of the qualifying session, not even giving Gasly the chance to drive again.Gasly crashed in Q1, not even giving him the opportunity to set the last fast lap in time, after a red flag caused by Tsunoda himself. In Baku, the Japanese driver suffered an inexplicable rear wing problem that took him out of the points. But, as consolation for the team, a great fifth place with the Frenchman - who, by the design of the season and considering the retrospective, proves to be a tremendous point outside the curve. Exception of exceptions.

That's because in Canada, things are already back to normal for AlphaTauri. Without any rhythm in Montreal, the team from Faenza still saw Tsunoda make a primary error, hitting the barrier on his way out of the pits and breaking his car. At Silverstone, the failure of failures: the Japanese driver, still on the home straight of the British GP, made a mistake when trying to overtake at turn 3 and caused a collision with Gasly himself, while the cars were battling for seventh place. The Frenchman abandoned the race with rear wing problems, while Tsunoda, with punishment, slogged his way to 14th and last position among the drivers who completed the race.

Finally, in Austria, Gasly got in the middle of the mess with Lewis Hamilton and spun right at the start of the sprint race. Tsunoda, in turn, crossed the finish line only in 16th place, with the right to a mess during the race: the driver sprawled on the track and threw Fernando Alonso on the grass, in the middle of the DRS activation zone.

Whew. Just by listing AlphaTauri's record in F1 2022, one can already see that the team hardly ever goes unnoticed during a weekend. Bad luck, breakdowns, strategic errors, individual failures: everything happens to the driver duo of the team headed by Tost. And climbing a mountain every round of the calendar is exhausting, for one side as well as the other.

Tsunoda, for example, is already seen as a "problem child" internally - Red Bull has hired a psychologist to accompany the driver. "It just depends on him. If he shows a good performance, he stays; if he doesn't show a good performance, he leaves. It's very simple," Tost said of his driver. "He needs to control himself in certain situations, be more disciplined. We'll see in the second half of the season."

Gasly, who has pledged to remain with the Faenza squad in 2023, has clamored - and clamors - for updates to the car. After all, according to the Frenchman, the season so far has been a "disaster" and, the AT03, the slowest car on the grid.

"I think we desperately need an upgrade on the car to get some decent result. You can do anything you want, any strategy you want, with the speed we have at the moment (it won't make a difference)," criticized Gasly. "It's not surprising when you don't have new parts, the others are improving. At the beginning of the year, we were fighting with the guys in front (of the mid-pack), and now we are finishing 20s, 30s behind. We're losing 0s4 or 0s5 a lap, and that's what we need to fix."

The scenario is dramatic. And regardless of anything, it has already left irrecoverable marks on the team for 2022. After all, if the intention before the beginning of the year was to fight to be the fifth force on the grid, that dream is already behind us. The reality is, in fact, to fight against Aston Martin - and maybe Haas, if the American team stops evolving - for the 7/8th place in the Constructors' Championship. But for this to happen, AlphaTauri needs to stop making strategic mistakes, stop breaking down, count on a little more luck and count, also, on fewer individual mistakes. It's a lot. At least everyone there is used to climbing mountains.