F1 News: Franz Tost Blasts AlphaTauri Team Strategists For Abu Dhabi GP Failure - "Too Stupid"

Franz Tost has hit out at team strategists for pitting Yuki Tsunoda only once.

AlphaTauri team principal Franz Tost has hit out at his team for being “too stupid to choose the correct strategy” after their plan to pit Yuki Tsunoda once in the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix didn't go as expected. While the team boss knew it wouldn't work out, his team was adamant that it would. 

Tsunoda put on a great show at the Yas Marina Circuit as AlphaTauri looked forward to overtaking Williams in the Constructors' Championship. Qualifying sixth, the Japanese driver set high hopes but a blunder in the strategy worked against the team's favor. 

During the Grand Prix, Tsunoda took the race lead at one point, but a one-stop strategy caused his pace to drop significantly. Ultimately, he lost to Fernando Alonso before almost being beaten by Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton in the final lap. 

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Tsunoda needed a P6 finish for AlphaTauri to beat Williams, but eventually, he ended up finishing P8. Consequently, Tost, who ends his journey with the team this year-end, clearly wasn't impressed with the team's strategy. 

Revealing the reason why he was "p***ed," Tost told Sky Deutschland:

“I’m p***ed because we were too stupid to choose a correct strategy and because I had a lot of discussions on the pit wall because I said, bring Yuki in, we’re closed slowly.

“I was told that it would work out. It’s pure arithmetic. I actually realised straight away that it probably wouldn’t work out."

Tost added that seventh place was a realistic target for Yuki to achieve, but the "technicians" sitting in front of the computer couldn't formulate a proper working strategy. He concluded:

“I’ll say now: A seventh place was 100 percent realistic for Yuki. Sixth, not so much, because Perez was behind us in qualifying and was simply faster [in the race]. So you had to take that into account that he was ahead.

“We messed it up because the technicians who sit in front of the computer for hours couldn’t figure out a strategy that would ultimately work.”