Explained: The AlphaTauri to Ferrari staff move revealed by Yuki Tsunoda on team radio

Yuki Tsunoda gave a farewell message to a Ferrari-bound AlphaTauri team member over the radio after the Canadian GP, and now their identity has been revealed.

It is in fact AlphaTauri’s head of digital content Josh Kruse, who has come to the end of his five-and-a-half year stint with the Faenza-based team to make the move to fellow Italian squad Ferrari.

Tsunoda’s radio message had initially caused some confusion, as he bid ‘Josh’ farewell and wished him the best of luck in this next chapter of his career with Ferrari, Tsunoda having worked with him throughout his F1 and AlphaTauri career to this point, which began back in 2021.

“Thanks Josh for the last three years,” said Tsunoda over the team radio, “good luck at Ferrari, goodbye.”

Following speculation over who Tsunoda could have been referring to, with Sky F1 pit-lane reporter Ted Kravitz claiming “AlphaTauri are losing an engineer to Ferrari”, it was duly confirmed to be Josh Kruse, so not an engineer, who later took to social media to confirm his exit from the AlphaTauri team.

That was though after Tsunoda had arranged a watery send-off for Kruse at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve’s rowing lake.

today was my last race with@AlphaTauriF1, my family for the past 5 and a half years

i’ll do a better post later, but for now thanks@yukitsunoda07for organising my bathpic.twitter.com/CTQVDejlNQ

— Josh Kruse (@joshkruseF1)June 19, 2023

PlanetF1.com建议

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This is not the first time that the cat has been let out of the bag perhaps prematurely on staff movement between AlphaTauri and Ferrari.

The announcement that Ferrari race director Laurent Mekies would take over as AlphaTauri team boss, with current principal Franz Tost set to retire at the end of F1 2023, did not go down well with Ferrari, who found it to be an “aggressive” move as AlphaTauri pulled the trigger on the press release.

Tost later explained that press leaks had meant that AlphaTauri were left with no choice but to make the news official public knowledge.

A start date for Mekies at AlphaTauri, Red Bull’s junior team, is yet to be confirmed, with Ferrari also believed to have struck deals with Red Bull personnel to make the move to Maranello, creating something of a stand-off between both sides.