"The car is completely new, front to back": Alpine pulls back the curtains on plans for 2024 F1 challenger

Alpine's Matt Harman has revealed that the French team's next challenger in the upcoming F1 season will be a different car. The 2023 season was not fruitful for the team, and it proved to be a rather disappointing one. It started with the sacking of the team principal and sporting director. The technical director eventually also made his way out of the team.

Before the start of the season, Alpine had set a few goals, with the primary one being to secure P4 in the championship and consolidate on their strong 2022 F1 season. However, that didn't happen. What's worse is that the team finished sixth in the championship between Aston Martin and McLaren.

Reflecting on the season, Harman admitted that the 2023 F1 season was not great. He said:

"We didn't we didn't do as well as we did on A522. I think we had a great year [in 2022], that year, I think every time we touched the development of the car, we put load, and we took a lot of weight off the car as well. So there was there was a lot of performance to be had."

He added:

“As we've got on that asymptote, and we're getting closer to the sorts of loads that we're seeing now, it's becoming more and more tricky, and you've got to get into more and more detail. That means we have to be a little bit more careful about how we invest our money. And so I don't think this year has been as successful as the 522."

Harman concluded by revealing that the team will build a new car for the next season:

“I think that's why for the following year's car, we've had to really unlock some real estate again, which is why the car is completely new, front to back. So I think you'll see that up and down the grid because the car needs to last for a couple of years while we look for the future."

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Working window highlighted as one of the weaknesses of Alpine's 2023 F1 challenger

Talking about Alpine's weaknesses, Matt Harman explained how their 2023 car had a narrow working window, which meant it was hard for their drivers, Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, to truly extract similar performance week in and week out. He said:

“I think its weakness is it needs to operate in a very narrow window. If you go to a circuit where it has a particular surface condition or a high level of ride content or something, then we can find ourselves in a position where it's more of a struggle, and the drivers don't enjoy the car."

Harman added:

“That's one of its weaknesses at the moment, that it is quite narrow. So we need to broaden it a little bit. We thought we broadened it enough going into the season, but clearly, we didn't. So that's what we're working on.”

Alpine did not have the best 2023 F1 season and will hope to turn things around in 2024.