The soon-to-be-renamed squad started last season on the backfoot, with a car that regularly left its drivers battling near the bottom of the midfield pack.
But an impressive effort to turn things around, which included a major aero revamp and switch to Red Bull’s rear suspension from the Singapore Grand Prix, helped the team become regular points scorers and eventually finish eighth in the constructors' championship.
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Beyond plans to forge an ever-closer alliance with sister team Red Bull and take more customer components for this year, technical director Jody Egginton has suggested that the team can enjoy further gains without requiring the intense approach that characterised 2023.
“We want to keep on this trajectory of progress we've been on in the second half of the year,” he told Autosport.
“The target is to achieve something similar to what we did in 2020 to 2021. We've been there before, we've done it, and we just need a solid winter and to hit the ground running.
“Then our season can be a little bit... not easy, it's never easy, but a bit more progressive. And we can develop the car in a slightly more structured way.
“[Last] year everyone in the team was flat out trying to get everything to the car as quickly as we can, which is what you want to do in Formula 1.
“But we want to be able to take a more measured and consistent approach. And if the car is a bit stronger out of the box at the start of the season, we can refine the approach we want to do, and that'll be a good measure of the progress we're making.”
While AlphaTauri showed last year that it had the capabilities to fight back from its disappointing launch car, Egginton is clear it is much better for teams to have a more structured approach to in-season development.
“Sometimes, it's good to take a bit of a breath and go, ‘well hang on a moment, we've been flat out trying to get back to where we want to be.’
“We were very clear publicly and also internally on which of our targets we missed, and in time we needed to address those.
“But in-season, everyone's moving forward as well. So, on top of where you want it to be for race one, you've got to keep going.
“So, credit to the team. We managed to claw it back, but we've got more work to do to get to where we want to be.
“But if we can keep on this trajectory, [we can be] similar to where we were in 2020 to 2021. We hit the ground running in 2021, and we had a good solid season and were consistent.”
