Debunking the AlphaTauri conspiracy theory

The timing of a safety car in the Dutch Grand Prix for Yuki Tsunoda’s broken-down AlphaTauri – allowing Max Verstappen to make a pitstop without losing the lead – led to a swathe of wild conspiracy theories. The gist of which was that AlphaTauri must have been instructed by its senior team Red Bull to stop its driver out on track to create the safety car. The theories can be easily dismissed.

Tsunoda came in for his routine tyre change on lap 46. Upon leaving he was reporting that the car felt strange. He was having to steer it on the straight and he assumed that a wheel had been incorrectly tightened and upon reporting this was instructed to pull off the circuit. He was undoing his belts preparing to leave the car when his team radioed that it could see no evidence of any loose wheels from the data and upon his confirmation that all four tyres appeared to be inflated, he was instructed to drive the car slowly to the pits. That seemed to be the end of any threat of a VSC or safety car, which would have allowed Verstappen, below, to make his second stop with 10sec less time loss to the field than at racing speed, which would have allowed him to exit leading rather than in third behind the two Mercedes.

Tsunoda returned to the pits, the wheels were changed again and he was sent on his way once more. Again, he reported, there was something wrong with the car at the back: ‘Maybe the diff?,’ he suggested. Listening in-car, the mechanical graunching is very obvious. There is something clearly amiss. This is not in any way a phantom problem. He is instructed to stop for a second time – and this then creates the VSC, which allows Verstappen to retain his lead.

Although the VSC made the taking of the lead simpler for Verstappen than it would otherwise have been, he was almost certain to take it anyway, such would have been the pace difference of his new soft tyres to the older mediums on the two Mercedes. That a team leading the championship so comfortably would risk exclusion from it just to make a race win it was going to achieve anyway a little simpler is just as ridiculous as the supposed phantom mechanical problem…