Alpine plan ‘completely new car from front to back’ to revive F1 2024 hopes

The French outfit spent most of F1 2023 in no man’s land, too far behind the leading five teams, and well ahead of the likes of Williams and AlphaTauri.

It meant Alpine could only secure sixth in the constructors’ championship, dropping two places compared to 2022.

While both of their drivers did pick up podiums last season, they generally fell too far behind McLaren and Aston Martin - who were two of Alpine’s main competitors in recent seasons.

Reflecting on 2023, technical director Matt Harman explained why Alpine struggled.

"I think we got a little bit outgunned aerodynamically by some other cars," Harman said. "We did make some ground at the start of the season on the people we were targeting, but there were some notable teams that had made a bigger step than we did.

"We didn’t really get to grips with the car until the second, third, maybe fourth event. That’s quite unlike us. We have a very capable trackside engineering team – in conjunction with the factory, [but] it took us a while to get to grips with that.

"It’s not because it’s difficult to set up, it’s because the window is so narrow – so you’re having to make compromises. It’s tricky.

"We didn’t do as well as we did on the A522 – we had a great year that year, every time we touched the development of the car, we put load on, and we took a lot of weight off the car – there was a lot of performance to be had.”

Harman believes Alpine won’t be the only team which will revolutionise their car concept for 2024.

"That’s why for [the 2024 car], we have had to unlock some real estate again, which is why the car is completely new from front to back,” he added.

"You’ll see that up and down the grid because the car has to last for a couple of years while we look for the future.”