From that preseason with a fire in Alonso’s car to fourth place in manufacturers (with more fires in Alonso’s car), Alpine celebrated its best result in recent years in Abu Dhabi. It’s no secret that they boosted engine performance at the cost of losing reliability, that they hope to correct in the factory, to fight for more competitive results. The play has gone well for the team, they beat McLaren in the table; and Ocon too, he was eighth in the World Championship with just a couple of serious breakdowns that did not make him lose points. Fernando may not agree, because he lost more than 50 points with mechanical problems in almost half of the grand prix and ninth place in the championship, which seems little by what was seen on the track. That’s why he went to Aston Martin.
But the Enstone garage is happy with the result. Szafnauer recounts the engine problems during 2022: “We knew that the engines were going to freeze so in France they did a great job. We told them to push the limits of performance, even though it could potentially come at a reliability cost. Reliability can be fixed and we hope to be reliable next year. When we have had problems we have corrected them very quickly. One, for example, was an assembly problem, it is a problem that is impossible to replicate on the dyno, we put processes in place so that it does not happen again”.
The ‘porposing’ was also an inconvenience at the beginning, although less than for others: “We were able to turn it off at the cost of performance, others could have done it but they didn’t want to lose that performance so they did all that stuff to put pressure on the FIA (referring to Mercedes) to change the rules. We got the car to a position where porpoising was not a problem for the drivers, we had a scale of one to ten and we never wanted to go beyond three or four. We manipulated the settings to make sure the car felt right without losing performance. Next year we should be fine.”
A French 2023 awaits them, with Ocon and Gasly at the wheel. Esteban’s year was discreet on the track, with more defenses than overtaking, but profitable in terms of results. “He has had fabulous races. And at other times we thought that he was not there and suddenly he appeared. Amazing. The defending at Suzuka was incredible with Lewis in the Mercedes, in a faster car, in the wet, all the time in his mirrors. And he kept him behind. Even in Abu Dhabi, he was comfortable because he knew that he would be able to hold his own (in front of Vettel). I know that Checo’s nickname is ‘minister of defense’, how do you say minister of defense in French? jokes Szafnauer. Ocon gave him the jumpsuit that he used in Yas Marina before leaving for the airport. While Pierre settles down, and without Fernando’s experience behind him, they are in the hands of Esteban.