Franz Tost, the outgoing AlphaTauri team boss reflected on all the Red Bull junior drivers that came under his watch over the past 18 years, picking Sebastian Vettel and Max Verstappen as the best two.
The 2023 Formula 1 season will be the last for Franz Tost at the helm of AlphaTauri, a position he has held since 2005 when the team then called Minardi was acquired by Red Bull and renamed Toro Rosso, with the plan of making it a testing a development ground for all the junior drivers that were in the Red Bull drivers’ program.
Over the years, Tost has seen many talents come and go, some went on to have long careers in F1, like Sebastian Vettel, Daniel Ricciardo, Carlos Sainz, Pierre Gasly, and Alex Albon, while Sebastian Buemi, Jaime Alguersuari, and Jean Eric Vergne bowed out of the sport earlier.
Asked to choose the best F1 talents he has trained; Tost said, quoted by F1’s Official Website: “Of course it’s easy to say. I could say now Max Verstappen; I could say Sebastian Vettel.
“They were the fastest because otherwise they wouldn’t have won so many races and championships, but there were also other drivers. They were not much slower, but maybe they were at the wrong time in the wrong team or whatever, but these two are the best, of course,” he explained.
Vettel and Verstappen the highest achievers that came out of Faenza
Vettel gave the Faenza team their first F1 win in 2008 winning the Italian Grand Prix from pole, and went on to dominate the sport with Red Bull between 2010 and 2013 with four Title doubles.
Verstappen was promoted to Red Bull after 23 races with Toro Rosso, and won his first race with the senior team his first ever in F1, the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix. He clinched his first Drivers’ Crown in 2021 beating Lewis Hamilton and is currently on a dominant streak similar to Vettel’s, winning the 2022 Championship and looking good to repeat that in 2023.
Tost added that the aim was to always to develop drivers at the team he lead; he said: “I think, when Dietrich Mateschitz decided to buy the Minardi team, he said one of the main pillars is to educate the young Red Bull drivers, and this is what the team did.
“Looking back, there were some very high-skilled drivers like Sebastian Vettel, then, of course, Verstappen. I know they won many races, championships and so on, but there are also some other drivers, they were really fast, like Carlos Sainz, like Pierre Gasly, Ricciardo, Daniel, and now Yuki Tsunoda.
“And there are a couple of drivers, they really improved a lot in the time, and they were in our team and they did a very professional job, they developed themselves and that’s good to see,” the Austrian concluded.
Franz Tost will be replaced by Laurent Mekies as Team Principal of AlphaTauri, the latter leaving his Sporting Director role at Ferrari.