Alpine reveal "purpose" in quest for double digit gain

Sam Hall
Wednesday 28 December 2022 13:10

Otmar Szafnauer has revealed his confidence that Alpine can fix its reliability gremlins and continue to hunt down the top three teams.

Alpine showed strong pace across the 2022 season but found itself embroiled in a season-long battle for fourth in the constructors' standings with McLaren after being set back by power unit problems.

These issues were not entirely unexpected, however, with Renault making full use of the regulations to extract as much horsepower as possible before a development freeze came into force with the knowledge that updates could still be made for reliability purposes.

Alpine eventually secured its position as F1's best-of-the-rest behind Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes at the Abu Dhabi season finale, fending McLaren off by 14 points.

Speaking to select media including GPFans, team principal Szafnauer said: “If we can [improve reliability] with the powertrain being frozen, and I have every confidence that we will, I think we'll naturally score more points," said Szafnauer.

"Because had we been reliable all year - you probably heard Fernando [Alonso] say 'I'd be 60 points down the road' or whatever it is - I don't know how many it is, but it's definitely a significant amount. Double digits.

"Instead of being 18 points ahead, we could be 70, something like that.

“If we just do that and the performance level stays relatively the same, we should be further up the road.

“But we also want to take a step in performance, and it's harder to do on the powertrain because it's frozen.

"We have to do it by understanding the chassis, doing a better job with chassis engineering, having two drivers that can continually score. So that's our purpose.”

Additional reporting by Ian Parkes