"I think we got a little bit outgunned aerodynamically": Matt Harman on Alpine's horrible 2023 F1 season

Alpine technical director Matt Harman feels that the team were outgunned aerodynamically in 2023 and that played a role in how the season ultimately unraveled.

The French team had a brilliant 2022 season in which they finished the season as the top midfield team in P4. The 2023 F1 season was supposed to be a step up for the team.

However, it proved to be a major step down as Alpine struggled while fellow midfield teams jumped ahead in terms of performance. The start of the season saw Aston Martin make a huge jump in performance. That helped Fernando Alonso secure as many as eight podiums in the season.

McLaren was the second team to make the jump and they ended the season P4 in the championship after multiple podiums secured by Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri. The Australian even secured a sprint pole and the win in Qatar. Alpine, for its part, had two podiums in Monaco and the Netherlands to supplement the sprint podium in Spa.

The French team ended the season in P6 after being leapfrogged by both Aston Martin and McLaren in the championship and falling too far down the grid. Talking to F1.com, Alpine technical director Matt Harman admitted that the team was outgunned aerodynamically. He said:

“I think we got a little bit outgunned aerodynamically by some other cars. 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."

He added:

"Some of that is to do with pure load on the car, pure development, and the amount of load we’re able to put on the car. Some of it was the understanding we needed to extract from the car in the way in which we operate it."

Alpine director hoping the changes bring a positive result in the future

Matt Harman talked about how the team had been trying to get to the bottom of their issues throughout the year. Some of the experiments were visible to the fans while the others weren't. Harman hoped that these changes would help the team in 2024 as the team tries to bounce back into the championship. He said:

“There have been experiments going on throughout the year to try and get to the bottom of that. Some of it has been visible, some of it hasn’t been so visible. We hope to use that learning to try and get a more positive result this year.”

Alpine is in a precarious situation at the moment as the two drivers Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly are nearing the end of their contracts. To add to this, the team has lost the team principal and the former technical director Nick Fry.