After a Slamming Rant, Alpine Honcho Changes Tone To Boost Overambitious F1 Goals Against Lewis Hamilton & Co.

Alpine’s inconsistency and fragility with their actions during the race weekends have left them frustrated for the season so far. Nevertheless, while doing some quick laps in qualifying and giving some tough competition on Sundays, the team demonstrated their ability to compete. That helps to explain the Alpine Honcho’s decision to change his tone following his tirade on the Enstone side came.

In a tight race with McLaren for 4th place in the constructor’s championship last year, team Alpine prevailed over the British squad by a narrow margin. The team hoped to catch up to some of the top teams by taking their results into account, as well as the fact that they had a fresh combination. The former driver of their team, Fernando Alonso, left them to join the Aston Martin, which had been projected as the dark horse of the season.

As the year progressed, the French team intended to compete against the top team and close the gaps, with the likes of Mercedes and Aston Martin. However, Alpine’s season has fared worse than they anticipated thus far. The Enstone outfit has been in shambles, with merely 14 points in their bag. If all doesn’t go according to plan, the team will be handed penalties, which will make the situation worse.

All of those have compelled Laurent Rossi, CEO of Alpine Team, to criticize his own squad. At the Miami Grand Prix weekend, Rossi delivered a critical tirade and remarked, “The trajectory is not good. We need to fix the mindset of the team ASAP. If not, it’s the rule of business there’s going to be consequences.”

However, given that the team is stuck with McLaren at the same places and is aware that the British team is dealing with its own issues, Rossi has altered his tone to support the lofty objectives. The CEO of the team wants to go closer to the Aston Martin and to Lewis Hamilton‘s Mercedes, who are gearing up their W-14 for the upcoming Imloa GP.

As quoted by racingnews365, Rossi said, “If we can develop this year, which is something we’re trying to do, we’re not that far behind Mercedes or Aston Martin, but the point gap is big now. We didn’t optimize or capitalize on opportunities and Baku was far from ideal. We added some important points here, but we need to add a little more to reach them.”

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In both the race and qualifying at the Miami Grand Prix, Pierre Gasly performed admirably. The Frenchman, however, was unable to hold on to the position since he was up against some of the best squads. Nevertheless, when asked why the team is having such a difficult time, team boss Otmar Szafnauer offered some rational justifications.

Why Alpine is struggling to perform?

Although the Enstone team has the quickness to compete in the midfield, the season didn’t go as they might have anticipated. The French squad has had mixed results thus far, but they did manage to score some significant points in Miami, Jeddah, and Bahrain.

The team has suffered as a result of the nightmares at the Australian Grand Prix and the terrible events in Azerbaijan. However, team boss Otmar Szafnauer has now revealed why the team is having such a challenging season.

While conversing with Racingnews 365, Szafnauer said, ” There are bigger teams out there that have better simulation tools. Coming into a weekend, the thing you do is you use all your simulation tools to predict a bunch of set-up parameters that you need to put on the car.”

While elaborating he added, “And sometimes our simulation tools are good enough to get us close and then we start off and we’re good, and other times not so, so we’ll start off slower, then get feedback from the drivers, adjust, and then we make bigger steps. If you have perfect simulation tools, or close to it, then you start the weekend pretty close to your optimal for that race.”

Given the recent developments at the Miami GP, do you believe the French team packed with two skilled drivers can upset the major teams’ plans?