The 2022 Formula 1 season brought many new features that the teams wanted to take advantage of to make a jump on the grid. However, Alpine has remained more or less as it is after a disappointing first third of the season.
things are not going well in Alpine and, despite the fact that the Anglo-French team insists that everything necessary to succeed is already in place, seasons go by and the results are the same as always.
the same Laurent Rossi, CEO of Alpine Cars, has acknowledged his discomfort with the performance shown by the team in the first seven races of the year. But that has not made the team’s goals more modest for the end of the season.
“We can aim higher. At least where our qualifying pace seems to take us.”
«The glass is half full», begins by saying a Laurent Rossi who does not give up finishing the year as the best team of the rest. “Fourth would be nice, third is a bonus. It would be better than last year, showing a good improvement in performance and competitiveness. Let’s be honest. At the moment, the Red Bulls and the Ferraris are in their own league.”
“I hate that expression, but to be third or fourth would be to be the best of the rest, so 5th or 6th place could be something we could fight for.”reiterates Laurent Rossi.
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A complicated goal
It is true that there are still two thirds of the season left, but at this moment Alpine is sixth in the constructors’ championship with 40 points, one less than Alfa Romeo, 19 less than McLaren and 94 less than Mercedeswhich is third in the ranking.
It seems, therefore, too optimistic to think about the possibility of third place. Even in beating McLaren if Alpine doesn’t start to find reliability and consistency in their performance. “We don’t even finish seventh or eighth regularlyso I prefer to consolidate fourth position and finish seventh or eighth regularly, and fifth and sixth from time to time”, admits Laurent Rossi.
The key is to be able to transfer the speed that the Alpine A522 shows in qualifying to the races, something that has not been achieved on a regular basis so far. “We can aim higher. At a minimum, getting to where we should be, where our qualifying pace seems to take us always, because we don’t convert qualifying pace into race pace.”
“It is a bit of a learning curve, because some of the components that were considered reliable are not., because we discovered that the car was drifting. Last year, you would get on a curb and most of the components wouldn’t move. Now, they shake all the time and they just don’t last,” says the CEO of the brand belonging to the Renault Group.
Bad luck
And, although it is true that Alpine has made mistakes and is not up to the task in terms of performance, it is also true that Fernando Alonso, especially, has been unlucky at certain times.
«Part of what happened is bad luck, Fernando was hit by Mick (Schumacher at Imola), and his race ended after two laps. And part of it is that we also have our own work to do to understand why performance is deteriorating.”
“Also, we still have an underlying performance decline during the race. We think we have the potential to score big points, and It’s not really happening, so it’s frustrating.”he concludes.
Will Alpine react in time to get the season back on track?
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Photos: Alpine F1 Team