Red Bull have returned the end plate, which became wedged under Max Verstappen’s car at Silverstone , to its rightful owner. The part belongs to Pierre Gasly’s wing, who lost it after a collision with AlphaTauri teammate Yuki Tsunoda. Only after the race did Red Bull discover the debris under Verstappen’s car, who had only finished seventh due to handling problems. A photo of the Dutchman with the piece in his hand then made the rounds, but the world champion is not allowed to keep it. Because as part of the FIA’s financial regulations, the teams have to keep a record of the parts they use, which is why Verstappen cannot pocket it as a souvenir. “Yes, they returned it,” confirms AlphaTauri’s chief technical officer, Jody Egginton. “Of course it’s on our UIIL (Used Inventory Incremental List) not theirs, so we need it back.”
Egginton simply thinks it’s bad luck that the part was picked up by sister team Red Bull and brought Max Verstappen to victory: “Sometimes these things are a snowball, aren’t they? The probability of that is low, but it happened, and unfortunately it has it affected Max’s race. I’m sorry and they returned it.”
What the team is doing with it: “I don’t know. There are a few places we could put it, but I don’t want to comment on that…” There was a lot of criticism for Tsunoda after the internal team collision, not only from Gasly but also from team boss Franz Tost and Red Bull Motorsport consultant Helmut Marko. The engineers also made it clear that something like this must not happen again. “There were discussions with Franz and Helmut, which are of course known to the public,” says Egginton. “And then we sat down as an engineering group and said what we need to do.”
“But from our side it’s more about sitting down and discussing objectively and figuring out what we need, what we want and how we want to get there. So there are some different discussions,” he said. “I’m not privy to the discussions that take place at the team principal level. But at the technical level, as a young rider, we’re going to sit down and discuss as engineers and say: we have to avoid that. And that’s what we want to achieve .”