MARCH 30, 2021
AlphaTauri is most improved team
With two Grand Prix in the same circuit in the space of four months, Formula One teams got a unique opportunity to compare their 2021 cars with last year’s chassis and evaluate how much the aerodynamic cuts imposed by the regulations affected their performance from one year to the next.
Yuki Tsunoda, Bahrain GP 2021
© Red Bull
© Red Bull
It’s clear that teams with high rake philosophy in the design of their cars lost a lot less performance than Mercedes and Aston Martin, who design their cars with very little rake, but the most remarkable development was certainly achieved by AlphaTauri and Ferrari, who lost less than half the lap time of their closest rivals and, in the Honda-powered AT02, gained almost 1,8s per lap, around the Bahrain International Circuit, on Mercedes!
Bellow, we compare the best qualifying times achieved by all ten teams (two of them under different names in 2020) last November and this March, noting that it’s not necessarily their Q3 time that ended up being their best of the weekend.
| Team | 2020 | 2021 | Lap time lost |
|---|---|---|---|
| AlphaTauri | 1m28.448s | 1m29.089s | 0.361s |
| Ferrari | 1m29.137s | 1m29.678s | 0.541s |
| Alfa Romeo | 1m29.491s | 1m30.708s | 1.217s |
| Red Bull | 1m27.678s | 1m28.997s | 1.319s |
| McLaren | 1m28.542s | 1m29.927s | 1.385s |
| Alpine | 1m28.417s | 1m30.249s | 1.832s |
| Williams | 1m29.294s | 1m31.316s | 2.022s |
| Mercedes | 1m27.264s | 1m29.395s | 2.121s |
| Aston Martin | 1m28.322s | 1m30.601s | 2.279s |
| Haas | 1m30.111s | 1m32.449s | 2.338s |