Alpine got off to a rocky start to the season with 14 points from the first five rounds and Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi has already said that “there will be consequences” if the team doesn’t improve. Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer addressed those comments after both drivers picked up points in Miami.
At the season’s opening race in Bahrain, Esteban Ocon retired after a series of penalties before both he and Pierre Gasly scored in Jeddah. However, neither rider managed points in Australia and Azerbaijan, and after scoring in Miami, Alpine sit sixth Ranking of builders – tied with McLaren on 14 points.
Over the weekend in Miami, Rossi spoke to the TV station in English channel+ about what he described as Alpine’s “amateurishness” this season, before adding one exclusive interview with F1.com: “If [people in the team] If you fail by giving 500% your best and turning ship back, there will be extenuating circumstances and bodes well for the future. If not, as is the rule of business, there will be consequences. And I won’t wait until the end of the year. The trajectory is not good. We need to change the way the team thinks as soon as possible.”
In response to Canal+ comments, Szafnauer said in Miami: “We underperformed in Baku, the drivers met in Australia, I think in the first race we had a lot of penalties because Esteban wasn’t in his seat,” said Szafnauer Szafnauer in Miami: “So it wasn’t a smooth start to the season – I don’t know, maybe that’s why he made the comments, I have to read them.”
The team boss added: “When you read something like that in the newspaper, there is no longer any pressure [our team]. Everyone wants to perform well here, it’s very experienced technicians and engineers at the highest level and we put ourselves under pressure. We just have to fix it.”
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Szafnauer added that the team understood the “root cause” of the engine problem it was afflicted with in Azerbaijan, where the team failed to score in either the sprint or the Grand Prix.
“All we can do when we have problems like Baku is to find and understand the root cause of it and set up the process and the people so that something like this doesn’t happen again,” he said. “We had an engine fire.” On the one hand, we have to make sure that doesn’t happen. Once you understand how it happens, there are ways to mitigate it. We will do that. We have already done it; didn’t happen here.
According to Szafnauer, Alpine’s focus is on further developing the A523 and catching up with Ferrari, Mercedes and Aston Martin – the latter team is in second place overall after the first five rounds of the season with 102 points.
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“Well I looked at the points and that’s one thing about where you end up in the championship, but I also looked at the race pace today and where we are,” said Szafnauer. “If we can top them this year, which we’re trying to do, we’re not far from a Merc or even an Aston.”
“But the difference in points is big now: we didn’t optimize the falls early on or didn’t take advantage of them at all, and Baku was far from ideal. The more races there are, the more points we’ve scored here, but we still need to score a bit more to catch up,” he concluded.
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