Alpine’s 2024 campaign endured a difficult start that saw the Enstone-based team occupying the back of the grid. The poor start to the seasonled to the departures of Matt Harman and Dirk de Beer following the lack of competitiveness from the overweight A524.
With the departure of the duo, Alpine gradually recovered lost ground with the reorganization of their technical director roles with Joe Burnell stepping up to the engineering lead, David Wheather in the aerodynamics, and Ciaron Pilbeam who is in charge of the performance.
Team principal Bruno Famin knew that a significant rebuild was needed to contend in the upcoming years and the team turned to David Sanchez and hired him as their executive technical director to bolster their engineering department.
Sanchez had only been part of McLaren since January before his sudden departure in March. Alpine moved in to acquire his signature for Famin’s new three-pronged technical structure.
With the Frenchman at the helm, the three technical directors report to him. In turn, Sanchez directly reports to Famin.
Speaking at Silverstone, he is largely happy with the state of the Alpine upon his arrival.
“They are very good. Everything needed to make a competitive car is there. So I was very pleased when I joined.”
Being an external recruitment, Sanchez has his own opinion on his vision of development and immediately worked on the team’s existing plan and brainstormed ways they can improve their performance very soon.
The A524 is still lacking performance in many areas,
“Coming from outside, there were obviously a few things I tended to have my own opinion on. There was a plan in place, we reviewed the plan, we adjusted a few things. For sure, the car needs a big push on upgrades. We are working on it and it’s going pretty well for now.”
Sanchez is happy with the current way of working at Alpine and believes they can replicate the success of his former employer’s mid-season turnaround last year.
“This structure is becoming more and more the norm. There are big teams, so you need a lot of structure and for sure at the moment it seems to be working. We saw last year that McLaren was able to make big steps in-season.”
As the season has gone on, Sanchez and Alpine started to understand their A524 better. Their efforts are centered on reducing the car’s weight after it was reported to be 10kg heavier than its projected weight.
Esteban Ocon brought Alpine their first points of the season with a tenth-place finish in Miami, with Pierre Gasly achieving the same result in Monaco two race weekends later. Between the Canadian and British rounds, the team bagged a double-points finish in Canada and Spain.
While the team’s best position to date is ninth, its recent performance suggests the team is heading towards improvement.
“We are learning more about the car and every race we are trying to squeeze more out of it. That’s been a good trend in the last few races. And there’s been a lot of learning to develop upgrades, and we should get new parts coming around the summer break.”
The team’s centered approach around weight-saving puts performance-driven upgrades to the side earlier in the season, and Sanchez believes the time is right to focus on downforce and performance.
“There’s been a large chunk of weight taken out of the car that cannot be underestimated. And then on the chassis side a lot, on the set-up side, getting the drivers comfortable with the balance and trying to get every little bit out of the car.
“Some of [the upgrades] were in the pipelines. Now we have a lot more coming up, plenty of ideas. And now it’s trying to pedal as fast as we can. I think it’s a bit of a lack of development. We just need more downforce. We need a bit more of everything, especially downforce.”
The direction is clear according to Sanchez and he hints at the possibility of running the A524 at a lower ride height to generate more downforce. But doing so without infringing the rules may be challenging, but he expressed confidence that the team can work around the existing rules.
“Obviously, the easy way to get downforce is to get the car running lower – but doing that without inducing problems. It’s one of the limitations, but I think everyone is fighting it. Running the car lower is the easy way to get downforce. But there’s a plank
“There are some regulations on the skates we need to be careful. But development-wise, I think the direction is very clear at the moment.”
Haas’ recent strong performance has eclipsed Alpine for seventh in the constructors’ championship and Alpine is determined to make up for it after capturing further signings.
Michael Broadhurst arrived to become chief aerodynamicist, while Vin Dhanani was installed as head of vehicle performance, the two of them had previously worked for Red Bull. Another signing is Jacopo Fantoni from Ferrari as the new deputy chief engineer.
Sanchez is juggling two tasks at hand — developments for 2024 and 2025. He has uncovered the key areas that the team needs to pursue for next year, the last year of this current set of regulations.
“I think for now we’re developing around the weaknesses.
“This year in-season it’s a lot about aerodynamics, and for next year’s car when we review the hardware we try and focus on fundamentally changing a few aspects of the car and that should be another step forward.”
He explained that the team’s focus for the rest of the season will be directed towards aerodynamics but they will shift their focus to suspension for next year.
“For next year there will be conceptual changes, again we’re talking about suspension mostly. For this year we’re shifting a bit focus on aerodynamics.“
He concludes by saying by noting the similarities between this year’s and next season’s car, but also highlighting that some components may be more powerful.
“I wouldn’t say it’s going to be big concept changes because when you look at the car it will look similar, but when you look at the aerodynamic characteristics, they will tend to be, some of them different, some of them just more powerful for performance.“
