Alpine ‘doesn’t know real pace’ after troubles in Bahrain F1 weekend Alpine F1 team principal Otmar Szafnauer says both drivers had a difficult weekend at the F1 Bahrain GP So, he says that he does not yet know how competitive the 2023 F1 machine “A523” will be.
Alpine F1 Team’s form was one of the big question marks in pre-season testing, when the Pirelli soft compound failed to deliver fast times. However, in the final race, both Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly faced problems, and we could only get a glimpse of Alpine’s true position. Ocon qualified ninth, but was forced to retire after receiving three time penalties in the race. Gasly started from the back after failing to set up aggressively in Q1, but in the race he moved up to 9th place and showed an excellent run. Ocon’s qualifying pace and Gasly’s resurgence in the final highlighted Alpine F1 Team’s potential, but team principal Szafnauer remains to be seen what he can do after a clean weekend. “The true pace is still unknown due to some operational issues during the race,” said Szafnauer. “Esteban had a number of issues that we talked about and Pierre was stuck in 19th place for quite a while in the early laps,” he said. “It can be as much as two seconds off a lap depending on where you do it.” “So even if it’s just because one car was out of position and the other had the problem we talked about. , I still don’t know where we are relative to each other.I don’t think we are that far apart.” It is suggested that the F1 team was the fifth fastest car in Bahrain. Szafnauer, who was ahead of Aston Martin compared to last year, has the biggest goal of “surpassing Aston Martin” to keep fourth place, but even in the short term, just having a clean weekend is enough “I’m sure we can get a lot of points,” he said. “I think I was about 16 seconds off Bottas at that point. I had him, but in the end I couldn’t overtake him. I think the stint went well,” said Szafnauer. “From an optimistic point of view, ‘If Pierre had started from ninth, he would have beaten Bottas for sure,’ ‘How close were you to Mercedes and (Lance) Stroll? They were 16 seconds ahead of us. We need to see.” “After that, we need development power that surpasses the opponent so that we can close the gap with the opponent we want to beat.” “Esteban dropped his position at the start, but from there Operationally, we’ll be able to run the race smoothly without any problems.” “And if Pierre can qualify and both of them can be in the top 10, they’ll score a lot of points and I think I can join the fight for fourth place.”