Esteban Ocon (FRA) Alpine F1 Team A523. Formula One World Championship, Rd 1, Bahrain Grand Prix, Saturday 4th March 2023. Sakhir, Bahrain.
Alpine says it needs to improve the one-lap pace of its A523 if it is to extract the full potential from its 2023 Formula 1 challenger.
Alpine had a mixed start to the new season in Bahrain.
Esteban Ocon qualified inside the top 10 but suffered an avalanche of penalties in the race which stemmed from lining up incorrectly on the grid.
Pierre Gasly was eliminated in Q1, with an infraction for track limits dropping him to last, though he recovered to ninth place in the race.
“It’s important that we remember that we are one race into the season and we have 22 to go,” said Alpine Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer.
“We’ve only been to one circuit with the car in full capacity so there’s much more to come and much more to learn and develop.
“Our race pace looks better than single-lap pace, so we know low fuel is a key area for us to improve.
“Esteban did a good job to reach Q3, while Pierre has more to learn to get the tyres into the right window to maximise everything over one lap.”
Szafnauer also urged Alpine to be operationally slicker in Saudi Arabia after the setbacks in Bahrain.
“We made too many mistakes across the weekend, and we can all do a better job to improve on those,” he said.
“Right now, we know the A523 has potential. We just have not exploited everything to the maximum yet and there’s work ahead of us to achieve that.
“I’d like to see a smooth weekend from the team with no operational errors and to have both cars well inside the points.
“It will be interesting to see the competitive order on a completely different track to what we’ve seen so far, and I firmly believe there’s much more to come from us.”
Keyword: Alpine targets one-lap pace gains in Jeddah