Szafnauer thinks that Alpine is not far from the top teams
Despite a significant point difference, Otmar Szafnauer is convinced that Mercedes and Aston Martin are not far behind. Alpine has only 14 points in the constructors' standings.
After a up-and-down start to the season, the Alpine team has not extracted the maximum compared to the true performance of the A523. Otmar Szafnauer, team principal of the French team, declared that the team will have to “surpass” Mercedes and Aston Martin if they want to catch up with them.
While Mercedes struggled to master their pontoon-less car concept, Aston Martin is standing out as the “best of the rest” with a second place in the constructors’ championship and, most notably, four podium finishes by Spanish driver Fernando Alonso. Alpine currently sits 82 points behind Mercedes and 88 points behind Aston Martin in the constructors’ championship, having only accumulated 14 points, the same as McLaren. Just like McLaren, Laurent Rossi, CEO of the Alpine team, admitted that the team had missed its objectives during the winter break.
Otmar Szafnauer, on the other hand, believes that Alpine will need to capitalize more in the next two races to narrow the gap and try to move up in the standings.
“If we manage to further develop ourselves this year, which is what we are trying to do, we won’t be so far behind Mercedes and Aston Martin’s performance,” he told the media. While the head manager of the French team remains optimistic, the car’s performance is far from the expected level. “But the points difference is significant now, in Bahrain and Baku, we couldn’t extract the best out of the car, and with a few accidents in Azerbaijan, it was far from ideal. We scored decent points in Miami, but we need to score a bit more to try and catch up.”
Laurent Rossi wants to see changes, and quickly
In an interview on Canal+, the CEO of Alpine publicly criticized his team after various misfortunes, including the penalties for Esteban Ocon in Bahrain and the anonymous weekend of the team in Baku. He revisited these statements by warning that “there will be consequences” if things do not improve for the team, and that he “will not wait until the end of the year” to make changes. Some names have emerged in the recent days, including those of Mattia Binotto and Eric Boullier, former boss of Lotus.
