Otmar Szafnauer claims Alpine were 'comfortably the fifth fastest team' in the Australian F1 GP

Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer mentioned that the French outfit was clearly the fifth-fastest team in Melbourne during the F1 Australian GP 2023.

The team were in fifth place on the grid for almost the entire race, courtesy of Pierre Gasly, and were keeping up with the likes of Ferrari, Aston Martin, and Mercedes.

However, they were unable to convert their solid pace into points as both Alpine drivers Gasly and Esteban Ocon collided with each other during the final red flag restart. Speaking to F1.com, Szafnauer mentioned that he was encouraged by the team's performance and said:

“At the last race, I think we were comfortably the fifth fastest team, with Ferrari just ahead of us, and us really not pushing hard to see if we could overtake them."

"[It was] a bit conservative but what we’ve got to do is get back on that springboard and develop over the season – it’s a long one – and continue to do what we did last year and improve the car as we go along to try to catch those ahead of us.”

“We think we can fight with them" - Alpine team boss on fighting at the front

The American stated that the team can fight with their rivals up front as they are also bringing in upgrades in the next couple of races to keep pace with them. He explained:

“We think we can fight with them. We too have a decent-size upgrade coming for Baku and then a little bit more only a week later in Miami, so we continue to push the upgrades out. The important thing is that they all work when we put them on the car and we have a good correlation with our simulation tools."

"We had a good correlation last year and if that continues, and if we continue to push the upgrades, we’ll take that development fight over the season to the others around us.”

The Alpine team boss added:

“Well, the break wasn’t planned but it is a welcome break from both getting ample car parts, and spares, as well as when we do bring developments. There’s a huge effort to make enough of those parts to ensure that you can really push hard so that definitely helps."

It will be interesting to see if the team can overtake McLaren to fifth place in the championship and challenge the likes of Ferrari and Mercedes on a consistent basis.