Amid a disappointing start to the 2023 season, Tost told the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix that he didn’t trust his engineers after the AT04 failed to meet expectations.

The team showed some signs of improvement in Melbourne, with Yuki Kakuda qualifying 12th and scoring the team’s first points of the season in 10th, moving up to fifth after the third start and before the red flag.

Egginton insisted the team had moved on from Tost’s comments.

“Franz knew the engineering team very early on,” he said when asked by Autosport about Tost’s words. “It’s the same engineering team that took the podium in 2019, 20 and 21.

“Frantz made a statement and maybe it was taken slightly out of context and didn’t really give an accurate picture.

“But we worked as a team, we sat down with Franz and discussed things and we moved on really.

“So it was. Franz did some interviews and made some suggestions, but we moved on. It’s not going to change anything, everyone agrees on what we have to do and we move on.”

Franz Tost, Team Principal, Scuderia AlphaTauri

Photography: Red Bull Content Pool

Egginton played down suggestions the team hadn’t set high enough targets for AT04 over the winter and lost out to more ambitious competitors.

“As team principal, Franz’s side were disappointed that the car wasn’t positioned well enough in midfield to get where we wanted to be,” Eckington said.

“He expressed that in a certain way. But we’ve reached some of our goals, they’ve been effective goals, they’ve been good goals, we haven’t quite reached some of the other goals, but we will.

“I’m not concerned that our goals are far from what we need to do to be competitive. It’s just some of the things we haven’t done. It’s a very tight midfield. If you’re not hitting your goals, then You will find yourself falling behind your goals.

“So when we get to our goals, I’m sure they’re valid goals and they’ll be enough to get us a foothold in midfield.”

Egginton said the fact that the team didn’t meet all of these goals was because they were set too high.

Yuki Tsunoda, AlphaTauri AT04

Photography: Glenn Dunbar/ motorsport pictures

“If you hit all your goals easily in the winter, you’re probably setting yourself the wrong goals,” he said. “They were aggressive targets. We met with some of them to understand the release specs, and others we met on the road.

“You have a plan and you work according to that plan, but sometimes you don’t quite reach your goals.”

The team brought a substantial update package to Melbourne, including a new floor and diffuser, although Tsunoda had to revert to the original spec after a practice hiatus.

Egginton said the updates show that the team is moving forward with development.

“The reality is that for the first part of the season, in order to get into midfield we have to try and get past some teams and that’s why we came to (Melbourne) with the floor,” he said. “And most teams earn less.

“So our strategy is just to continue to improve the performance of the car. Hopefully we’ve overtaken some of the competitors in the early part of the season and we’ve caught up to them. If we don’t develop them, we won’t catch up. So our strategy It’s clearly an attempt to close that gap.”