Though Alpine finished in fourth position in the Constructors’ World Championship, the continuous breakdowns in the driver’s car Fernando Alonso have hinted that the French team must improve reliability if you want add more points in 2023.
In fact otmar szafnauer, head of the team, has indicated these two things as his wishes to achieve for the next season. “Fourth place is probably where we deserve to be,” he says. szafnauer to ‘Racer.com’.
“We should have had a few more points than we haveWe had some reliability issues, not really performance issues, and I hope to get them next year, because they can be corrected from a powertrain perspective, I know they can make those changes,” he says.
Alonso abandoned the race six times (plus other breakdowns in qualifying or Sprints). szafnauer believes they should be more reliable in 2023: “We should have a more reliable powertrain next yearAlthough some of the problems weren’t really with the powertrain, but with ancillary parts. We have to redesign and fix them.”
“I think we can do that with the frozen powertrain and I have every confidence that we will. So I think naturally, we will get more points“, Add.
“If we had been reliable all year, you have probably heard Fernando say that ‘it would be 60 points away’ or whatever,” he says. Fernando said a similar phrase after one of his retirements in 2022. alonso finished with 81 points, 11 behind Esteban Ocon already 41 of Lando Norris. If everything had gone normal, the Spaniard would have finished ahead of both in the classification without a problem.
Will Alpine make a leap forward in 2023?
Alpine finished ahead of McLaren in the Constructors’ World Championship, and their fight for fourth place lasted until almost the last race. Had they been more reliable, they would have secured fourth place much sooner. “Instead of 14 points ahead, we could be 70 or something like that,” he says. szafnauer.
He hopes to be more competitive in 2023 if they manage to fix their reliability problems: “If we only do that and the level of performance remains relatively the same, we should go further down the road“.
Finally, the head of Alpine hopes to find a way to improve to win tenths: “Also we want to take a step forward in performanceoy that is more difficult to do because it is frozenso you have to do it understanding the chassisdoing a better job engineering the chassis and having two drivers who can continually score points.”
Pierre Gasleynew pilot of Alpineassured the following about his new team: “They told me that next year their car will be the best they’ve ever made. and that they will be fighting for a good position”. The only thing left to do is wait for the new season to start to see the real position of each team.