Welcome Drivers!

This post is a continuation of the Constructor Deep Dive series we are currently working through. If you haven’t already, check out the deep dives that we have already done below.

• Williams Racing (Link)

• AlphaTauri (Link)

• Haas (Link)

• Aston Martin (Link)

• Alfa Romeo (Link)

• McLaren (Link)

Next on the list is Alpine, who finished as “best of the rest” P4 in the Constructors championship in 2022.

2022 Performance

Alpine had a solid year in 2022 finishing with 173 and jumping McLaren to claim the best of the rest spot. Their sights will be on getting themselves into championship contention however they have a long way to go.

Alpine was 342 points behind the third place team in Mercedes and only 14 points ahead of McLaren in fifth. The gap to the top teams is very wide and Alpine will need to improve their reliability issues if they want to take the next step.

Alpine suffered a DNF by one of their drivers on 7 separate occasions and had both drivers retire from the Singapore Grand Prix. They will need to address this issue going into 2023. This does not substantially close the gap to the top teams but it will help them stay on top of the midfield.

In 2022, Ocon led the team with 92 points followed closely by Alonso, who is now with Aston Martin, with 81 points. Alonso was able to finish with 81 points despite retiring early 6 times through the course of the season. A good amount of those early retirements happened when Alonso was in point scoring opportunities.

Looking Ahead to 2023

Leadership, Management & Partnerships

Prior to the 2022 season, Apline CEO Laurent Rossi laid out Alpine’s 100-race plane to be back at the forefront of Formula 1. A little less than 80 races remain to achieve this goal and it looks like it will take a herculean effort to pull it off.

Alpine Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer said they needed to close the cap to third. Even if they still finish in 4th they need to make progress and get closer to the top teams. Szafnauer is about 1 year into his role at Alpine and has learned the ropes of the organization. His main focus is identifying what the team’s needs are to compete at the front of F1, and ultimately going out and getting those needs.

Szafnauer touched on the primary issue for the 2022 team, reliability, by saying it was a result of deliberately pushing the edge on performance and fixing any issues that arose. He expects the updates the team has made will pay off in 2023 and said they will be expecting to score 50-70 points from the changes alone.

Development

As we touched on above, reliability was Alpines main issue in 2022. They pushed the performance on purpose with the intent of fixing the problems they ran into. While some of the issues were the powertrain that they were allowed to address under the engine-freeze regulations, others were non-powertrain issues that Alpine claim to have handled.

Due to the engine-freeze regulations, there is not much performance to be gained from powertrain upgrades as you can only update items related to reliability. For true performance upgrades, Alpine will need to focus on the chassis design. They have updated their side pods to a more Red Bull style and have also adopted the Red Bull “cannon” at the rear for a cooling airflow exit.

Szafnauer was able to introduce development philosophy changes when he arrived at Alpine. He wants Alpine to put performance over everything. His goal is for Alpine to stop wasting time on upgrades that address periphery issues and solely focus on improving the performance of the car. This is how Alpine will make bigger strides in the development race.

Another thing Szafnauer addressed was the amount of time it took for them to bring upgrades to the track. In his previous roles with other teams, this process was a lot faster than Alpine’s. He helped address this by changing the timing of releasing upgrades from the wind tunnels and starting the engineering work earlier at the expense of having to re-do things later on. He referenced the floors were a big part of this as they were able to bring new floors in about half the time.

Szafnauer seems to have a good idea of the direction the team needs to go and a good process of helping the team get there. They are playing catch-up to the big teams in terms of tools and resources but if they can remain efficient they should be competitive in 2023.

Drivers

Alpine had to make some big changes to their driver line up. F1 legend and two-time champion Fernando Alonso left the team for Aston Martin after a frustrating year of reliability issues that seemingly did not affect his teammate. Alpine had planned to keep Alonso but that fell through when he decided to join Aston Martin.

After the Alonso announcement, Alpine had initially announced Oscar Piastri as their driver for 2023. They even put out posts on social media stating this. Piastri was an Alpine Academy driver so this move made sense however Piastri came out stating that he would not be joining Alpine, rather he would be signing a contract with McLaren for 2023. This was a very embarrassing ordeal for Alpine as they had spent time and resources developing Piastri to one day be their driver.

After that debacle, Alpine eventually signed Pierre Gasly, a former Red Bull driver who had been racing for AlphaTauri. Gasly is a former race winner and is finally escaping the Red Bull system and will have the opportunity to compete on a headline team for the first time since 2019. He is a proven driver with a lot of quality race experience.

Gasly will be joining Esteban Ocon, who is entering his 4th year at Alpine. Ocon is a race winner as well and will be looking to take the next step and compete for podiums and race wins with Alpine. The two will be looking to work together to bring Alpine back into the fold however, Ocon does have a history of squabbling with teammates. He and Sergio Perez often came too close for comfort at Force India and Alonso scolded Ocon over the radio about his behavior.

Alpine, the loan French F1 team, will have two French drivers racing for them. It will definitely be one of the more interesting driver pairings on the grid this season. It could be harmonious between the two but it also has the potential to turn ugly as both drivers desperately want to prove they belong at the top of F1.

2023 Predictions

We see a tight battle for best of the rest between McLaren and Alpine in 2023. There is also the potential of Aston Martin surprising and having a strong year as well. We do not think Alpine will be able to pull themselves closer to the top 3 due to the midfield tightening up this season.

Alpine’s drivers are up there with the best pairings but neither driver has had to prove themselves when the pressure is on. This is not exactly true because Gasly was under immense pressure while racing for Red Bull and he ultimately crumbled and was replaced mid-season. We think he is much more mature now and will be able to handle it if his time comes.

Alpines season will ultimately come down to two things. The first is them getting on top of their reliability woes, and the second is maintaining fair play between their teammates. They will need to be focusing on what is best for the team and not what is best for themselves.

Upcoming Posts and Reader Feedback

Our next post will be a continuation of the deep dives into each team for their 2023 outlook. We will try to get out one a day considering we have limited time before the pre-season testing starts in late February.

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