"We expect to take a step forward": Alpine confident of the upgrades to be brought in Baku

Alpine expects to "take a step forward" with its new set of upgrades scheduled to be brought in for the Grand Prix in Baku. The French team has had a rocky start to the 2023 F1 season. The season opener in Bahrain saw Esteban Ocon's race get massively compromised by damage and penalties and then the third race saw the two drivers collide with each other, resulting in a DNF for both.

Even though the car appears to have strong pace that should be good enough to keep it as the leader of the midfield, the points are just not there to show for it.

Alpine is still taking the positives from the race in Australia, where Pierre Gasly ran inside the top five, and are hoping that the next batch of upgrades will further improve performance. The team is hoping to close the gap to the front as every team starts bringing upgrades to the track.

Speaking about their upgrade plans, Alpine Chief Technical Officer Pat Fry was confident of what the new set of upgrades would bring to the car. He said:

"In Baku we will have a good package of novelties and then other small things in the following rounds. Ours is a reasonable development plan. In Baku we expect to take a step forward and then we will have other things for the races to follow."

He added:

"The correlation will never be optimal, but the data is very similar to what comes out of the simulator and this helps us to better understand the car. Mechanically it has changed a lot, we have many more options in terms of development and setup, however now we are still getting to know it and up to now we have been on three different tracks"

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Alpine's target of a P4 finish in jeopardy early in the season

Alpine finished the 2022 F1 season as the top midfield team, securing P4 in the constructor's championship. This season, the team had a target of closing the gap to the front and consolidating P4 in the championship.

However, all those targets have been thrown out of the window with Aston Martin making an almighty leap to the front of the grid. Because of that, the French team finds itself fifth in the pecking order and in a situation where it might be hard to replicate its achievement from 2022.

While the team remains steadfast in its pursuit, it remains to be seen what kind of result it could achieve this season.