Formula 1 | Alpine presents its new single-seater with the desire to “close the gap”

(London) Driven by its duo of 100% French drivers, the Alpine Formula 1 team presented its 2023 single-seater on Thursday with the declared desire to ensure its rank and the hope of being close to the leading teams.

The objective is clear for the French team, 4^e in the constructors’ championship last season: “we want again – and at least – to finish 4^e “, assured the general manager of the brand, Laurent Rossi.

It is with the A523, the car that the Normans Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly will drive, that the team now intends to ensure “more arrivals, fewer retirements, more points, and perhaps more podiums” to get closer to the Red Bulls, Ferraris and Mercedes, dominant last season. In 2022, “the gap with the third (Mercedes, editor’s note) was quite large and we must fill it”, he abounded.

Alpine, whose only podium dates back to 2021, has set itself the goal of fighting for victories by 2024. “This climb to the top is a marathon, not a sprint,” recalled Rossi.

“It will take time, but we have given ourselves more or less five years, or 100 races. We were 5^e in 2021 (in the constructors’ championship, editor’s note), 4^e in 2022. Naturally, we are now aiming for the top positions”, he continued during the presentation of the Alpine 2023 from London.

The French brand has indeed unveiled its new single-seater during a presentation organized on English soil, because if the Alpine brand is from Dieppe in Normandy, the team is based in Enstone in England, for the chassis, and in Viry-Châtillon ( Essonne) for the engine part.

Mainly blue with touches of pink, the color of its title sponsor BWT, the A523 will be almost entirely pink on the occasion of the first three GPs of the season (Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Australia), an even stronger testimony to the group of Austrian water treatment.

As for the teams, if no change is to be noted on the side of the management of the French team, among its pilots, the 2023 vintage marks the arrival of Pierre Gasly, who came straight from AlphaTauri, stable’s little sister Red Bull, constructors’ world champion.

The French team was the tenth and last team to present the 2023 version of its single-seaters.