While Alpine have had some highs in 2023, capped by podiums by Pierre Gasly in Zandvoort and Esteban Ocon in Monaco, their lows on and off the track have plummeted them to 6th place in the Constructors’ Championship. They are in no-man’s land with an 88-point deficit to McLaren in front of them, but they hold a big 63-point advantage over Williams behind.
Photo credit: BWT Alpine F1 Team
On the track, they’ve been struggling to break out of the midfield. Off track, they mutually agreed with Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer and Technical Director Alan Permane in July that they should leave the team.
Meanwhile, the man taking the reigns, Bruno Famin, has said that the focus is not on how they can climb up the order, but rather learning from each race.
“We’re not thinking about the championship anymore, we just want to get the best possible result every time, taking the races one after the other.”
Throughout all the changes away from the circuit, Famin says that the changes were good and that there is a new mentality in the team that has changed it for the better.
Photo credit: BWT Alpine F1 Team
“We made some quite good, quite big changes at the end of July within the team.
“This created a new mindset on the track-side team. I’m quite happy with what I’ve seen so far.
“I think we made some quite good races in terms of strategy execution since that.”
While place in the pecking order is not the priority, what is the focus for Famin is how to get everyone working closed together to increase performance from the car next year and beyond.
“I’m still assessing the factories, both, with the goal to really see how to extract more performance.
“I think one of the key things is trying to get all the people working together: both sites but also within each of the sites to extract all the potential we have.
“We have a lot of potential, but the difficulty is to put everybody together, everything together, to create more performance, this is what I’m assessing now.”
