The 2022 F1 car reveals are coming thick and fast, and today it’s the turn of the AlphaTauri AT03. Mercifully, this isn’t just the generic F1 show car with a team livery (cough cough Red Bull), this is – mostly – the real deal.
Gallery: AlphaTauri AT03 2022 F1 car
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AlphaTauri’s driver line-up remains Pierre Gasly and Yuki Tsunoda for the second year running, and while Gasly will be hoping the AT03 will see him regularly qualify in the first three rows of the grid, as he did in 2021, Tsunoda will be longing for a more consistent year, joining Gasly further up the pecking order and pushing the team beyond its sixth place in the Constructors’ standings.
So, the AT03. First of all the nose is very much that of the show car unveiled in 2021. Having said that, with the exception of Aston Martin, they’ve all been like that. Further back is where things look more interesting. AlphaTauri have gone for a square sidepod inlet, and unlike Aston Martin, there are no additional areas that have been blanked off, likely to disguise the real shape for now.
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The AT03’s sidepod then falls away right down towards the floor, while an additional bulge emerges on the engine cover, with air, therefore, effectively channelled between the two surfaces. The rear wing does feature a DRS actuator, but everything else at the back has, for somewhat obvious reasons, been blanked off in the renders.
ow the sidepods and engine cover pinch in moving rearwards sits somewhere between the skin-tight Red Bull RB18 and the bulbous Aston Martin AMR22. Now we just need to wait for pre-season testing to get a proper look at that nose and rear end…
