The team has retained Daniel Ricciardo and Yuki Tsunoda for this season, leaving Liam Lawson, who contested five races last year, on the sidelines.
The fresh identity, incoming major US-based sponsors and an extra push from owner Red Bull has obliged AlphaTauri to focus on getting the best possible results, rather than serve primarily as a training ground for a potential recruit to its sister team, which was usually the case in the past.
The change also coincides with former boss Franz Tost handing the reins to the management pairing of Bayer and new team principal Laurent Mekies.
“The shareholders, when they were resharpening things, they also said, 'we want you to be competitive',” said Bayer. “Franz always says, and honestly in the meantime I agree 100%, that a young driver needs three years to be sort of ready for F1.
"With all the complexity the sport is currently requiring, and the amount of information they have to digest and process and then feed back to us, so that we again understand as a team what to do, how to change the settings and so on, and to be competitive, simply they need a lot of time.”
Source: Autosport