AlphaTauri found themselves in a photoshop controversy after fans noticed an image manipulation in a post announcing the return of Daniel Ricciardo to Formula 1.
The Austrian team had initially photoshopped Ricciardo’s head onto the body of outgoing driver Nyck De Vries, but later deleted the post and shared an authentic photo.
Ricciardo, who previously drove for McLaren, lost his seat last season and will now partner Yuki Tsunoda at AlphaTauri after De Vries was dropped.
De Vries struggled to make an impact during his time with the team and failed to score any points, which ultimately led to his departure.
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However, concerns have been raised about Ricciardo’s move to AlphaTauri, as the team currently sits at the bottom of the constructors’ championship with only two points.
Despite his race-winning pedigree, doubts remain about how much improvement Ricciardo can bring to the struggling package.
Ted Kravitz of Sky Sports expressed surprise at Ricciardo’s decision, suggesting that AlphaTauri should have stuck with De Vries.
Speaking on the Sky Sports F1 podcast, Kravitz said, “It’s all well and good to point to [Daniel’s] testing times in the Red Bull RB19, which is the class car of the field, but the reality is Ricciardo’s not driving that car.
“He’s driving probably one of the slowest cars on the grid, if not the slowest, which is the AlphaTauri.
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“My only question is, not that they shouldn’t have replaced Nyck de Vries – clearly it wasn’t working… the surprise is why Daniel Ricciardo would want to go into that car and a car that is worse than the McLaren he left last year, probably.”
Kravitz also highlighted Ricciardo’s own words in the press release, where he referred to being back on track with the Red Bull family without explicitly mentioning AlphaTauri.
Kravitz found this quote odd and speculated that there might be some short-term difficulties for Ricciardo if he couldn’t deliver better results than De Vries.