Yesterday I was in Imola for Scuderia AlphaTauri’s filming day with their new 2021 car: the AT02. They can be considered as a sort of brief shakedowns, during which teams can test their new cars but just for a maximum of 100km and using special tyres (not an actual compount used during the season). Only 2 filming days are allowed during the year (2 x 100 km) and they should be reserved for promotional or marketing purposes but of course teams aim to have the first real checks after all the work done during the winter. Cars from previous seasons don’t have any distance limit if used during one of these occasions.
To be honest this was the first time in my life I actually saw an entire media equipe around the track, plus a (slightly annoying) helicopter doing some aerial shots, so for some reasons I’m kinda satisfied to have been at an actual ”filming day”, compared to my experiences from previous years. During the first hours of the day, AlphaTauri did some laps and recordings with both the official drivers, Pierre Gasly (number 10 on the single seater) and Yuki Tsunoda (number 22), behind the wheels of an old 2019 Toro Rosso STR14 (featuring the current 2021 livery), the former, and the 2021 AT02, the latter. Imola Circuit is around 4.9 km long so in order to stay under the 100 km limit, the AT02 could only be used for 20 laps. So for that Yuki completed his ten laps in the morning while Pierre had the whole afternoon to push a little bit more the 2021 car.
I tried to edit the video grouping the few laps did by the STR14 at the very beginning. Than you can see all the scenes my friends @Italiansupercarvideo, @MattyB727 – Car Videos and I recorded of both cars running together (in this part the STR14 is the one that has the rear wing LED lights always turned on) and for a good second half of the video you can appreciate only the footage related to the new AT02 all alone. During the day the AT02 was fitted with a different front nose and front wing compared to the one showed during the official unveil last week.
