Szafnauer compares Aston Martin with Force India: “It’s the same team”

As in Formula 1 only the last race is remembered, you have to look at the classification: Aston Martin is now the second team in the manufacturers’ standings (23 points) and Alpine, seventh (2 points). In the past, the change of scenery has been wonderful for Alonso and has given him a car of podiums to breathe on the tedious middle zone. Meanwhile, life goes on in the Enstone team with a negative example right under their noses: Aston Martin has shown that you can progress by leaps and bounds on this grid (in Abu Dhabi 2022, Vettel fought against Fernando and Ocon). And Alpine hasn’t done that this winter.

otmar szafnauer, head of the team, agrees: “Congratulations to them, we want to beat them and we will do everything possible to get closer. The Bahrain race was not normal for us, normally we don’t make operational mistakes and also Pierre (gasily) came out last I think Lance (Stroll) was just ahead of us but I still don’t know if in a normal race we can beat them. We will reflect, we are not where we want to be”. The North American leader was one of the top managers in the Silverstone team, although he left in 2022 with the arrival of martin whitmarsh as CEO.

Szafnauer does not believe that sharing a wind tunnel with Mercedes is detrimental compared to having your own facilities (like Alpine’s): “To be fair, it was always a good and efficient team. The Mercedes wind tunnel is very good and I don’t think sharing it is a penalty, because otherwise people wouldn’t share it. Whether you have your own or share it, there are no significant differences. Congratulations to them. But Force India was exactly the same team in 2014, we were fourth (refers to 2016) and we had a lot of race pace”. It ignores the signings of weight in the design department (Dan Fallows or Eric Blandin) or the level of the pilots, with Alonso in the current squad.

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“Congratulations to Aston (Martin) for taking such a big step, but we have to beat them too and we need to see how close we are to pole position and in race pace compared to last year. What we need is to get closer each year. Aston (Martin) he made enormous progress and we must do it too ”, repeats Otmar, who sees Fernando as strong: “He is enormously motivated, he lives for this. Lance was injured and it seems that Fernando fought very hard for the positions. The point is that age catches up with all of us, although I have no idea when.”

Ocon and Gasly

On Alpine’s first weekend of the season, Gasly’s ninth (started last) makes up a Sunday nonsense with Ocon in Bahrain: received three penalties. “The grid penalty is that I was out of position at the start. He then missed a second at the pit stop before starting to work on the car. We have a sound system in the headphones of the mechanics that was advanced by four hundredths. The third, speeding. We have a meter on the limiter and I think it kicked in half a meter late. They are operational errors and we don’t have to make them again”, justifies Szafnauer. He overlooked a small detail: Esteban abandoned because of the engine. “His engine in particular was a little hot. We didn’t want it to suffer major damage,” he said. echoes of the past

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