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AlphaTauri chief race engineer Jonathan Eddolls has confirmed the team was forced to change the floor on Daniel Ricciardo’s car ahead of qualifying for the Hungarian Grand Prix.
Eddolls has revealed an anomaly in the data on Ricciardo’s AT04 during final practice at the Hungaroring, leading to the change.
In his first qualifying session for eight months, and in a car he only drove for the first time on Friday, Ricciardo managed to out-qualify team-mate Yuki Tsunoda by 0.013secs to become the first AlphaTauri driver to reach Q2 since the Spanish GP.
Asked by Speedcafe about the issue with the floor, Eddolls said: “So in free practice three, during the running, we have many pressure tappings to analyse the health of the floor, and we saw something we didn’t like.
“I don’t think he damaged it. Maybe some degradation, or he may have touched a kerb or something, but we saw something we weren’t happy with.
“We’ve many spares so we decided to put the next best one on for qualifying and then the car was performing back as expected.
“What we’re limited on are the new parts, the rear wings, and front wings. Floors, we’ve got spares.”
For this weekend, AlphaTauri has delivered a major upgrade package, running with new front and rear wings, nose and floor body.
Due to the lack of spares with regard to the wings, Tsunoda has been forced to revert to an older-spec front-wing after damaging the update in Friday practice.
“Both have got the updated rear wing, but Yuki has the old front wing,” confirmed Eddolls.
“We try to push the development, and although we do have a spare, we didn’t want to take any parc fermé risk in qualifying with either car.
“If you’ve got only one on each and you’ve got no spare, it’s easy to damage a wing here. We have a policy of ‘if you’re given one each and you damage it, unfortunately, you go back one spec for the rest of the weekend’.”
With only two days of running with AlphaTauri, and first practice almost washed out by the poor weather, Ricciardo has so far tempered his remarks to the team with regard to his feeling from the car.
Eddolls is fully expecting that to change following a full race behind him.
Although replacing a driver in Nyck de Vries who was renowned for his exceptional feedback, Eddolls commented: “With Daniel coming in, obviously, what he’s got on his side is the experience, so actually, he’s also quite good at that.
“We’ve only really worked with him for two days, so he’s not wanting to be too vocal about giving massive development direction yet.
“I think when he completes the whole race, with the tyres going off, a race gives you a bit more of an idea of the main, let’s say, limitations of a car, so I think we’ll get a better view from him afterward.”
