otmar szafnauer (Romania, 58 years old), Alpine’s ‘main team’, raises the expectations of his team after the first images of the new car: “We are serious, we have to improve. It’s good to be fourth, but we must be solid close to third and for that we must evolve more than anyone else. It’s the goal we set ourselves.” The person in charge tells AS how they have worked to solve the reliability problems of the power unit in 2022: “There are some things that could not be fixed during the season. But we have fixed everything with which we suffered last year”.
Before running Alpine, Szafnauer was in charge of the Racing Point that is now Aston Martin. So talk about Alonso’s car knowingly: “It is a relative game, it is difficult to know where we will be. We’ll see in a few weeks. I’m sure that They have made high-profile signings knowledgeable about the equipment they come from. For me, the actual test is 2024. So you already have to have the ideas yourself, it’s not worth bringing the ideas of Red Bull or Mercedes.
Before, during the presentation of the A523, he was the technical director, Matt Harman, who pointed out some of the changes in the car with respect to the A522: “It has evolved in many aspects. We changed the front and rear suspension and we’ve unlocked performance through the front wing and airflow structures. This has allowed us to push more performance towards the diffuser and slightly vary the suspension concept. We adapted the heat expulsion system in terms of size and position to complement A revised body based on last year’s good performance. We improved the efficiency of the rear wing and in particular the ‘beam wing’, at very high profit levels.