Tsunoda and Gasly complete shakedown of AlphaTauri AT02 at Imola

It’s been a busy few days for Red Bull’s F1 teams, with Red Bull Racing having shaken down their new RB16B at Silverstone on Wednesday – while on the same day, some 1,000 miles away in northern Italy, sister squad AlphaTauri were running their 2021 challenger, the AT02, at Imola.

The team’s drivers Pierre Gasly and F1 rookie Yuki Tsunoda were on the ground at the Autodromo Enzo e Dino Ferrari (to give Imola its proper name) to put the AT02 through its paces, after the car became the second 2021 machine – following on from McLaren’s MCL35M – to break cover on February 19.

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AlphaTauri used up one of their filming days for the Imola runs, limiting Gasly and Tsunoda to just 100km on demonstration Pirelli rubber – with Tsunoda having already completed a number of days previously in older spec Toro Rosso and AlphaTauri machinery in order to get him up to speed, as he prepares to make his F1 debut at the Bahrain Grand Prix on March 28.

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For Gasly, meanwhile, 2021 will mark his fifth season of driving cars for the Faenza-based squad, having made his F1 debut with Toro Rosso at the 2017 Malaysian Grand Prix.

Following on from the shakedown, the next date for AlphaTauri’s diary is March 12-14, when the AT02 will run in anger for the first time at the Bahrain International Circuit, as 2021 pre-season testing gets under way.