Alpine is “significantly up” with its 2023 F1 car development

The Enstone-based squad has had the fourth quickest car for much of the 2022 campaign and is the favourite to secure that best-of-the-rest slot in the constructors’ championship behind Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes.

One of the key elements of its season has been an aggressive update programme which has helped it push ever close to the front of the field.

Off the back of a major floor development that has delivered a good step forward in performance, a further tweak will be made to it for this weekend’s United States Grand Prix in Austin.

And the ongoing promise that development it is showing with its current car is mirrored with work on its 2023 car, which is currently ongoing in its wind tunnel and CFD facilities.

Sporting director Alan Permane has revealed that early indications point to next year’s car delivering some good gains, which has set up the prospect of it being able to close in on the teams ahead.

“They’re already, really, significantly up with next year’s car,” said Permane, when asked about the progress of the team into 2023. “It’s very good. It’s very exciting.”

Alpine’s point-scoring form has been hit this season by a run of reliability problems, but the team has been clear that it needed to push things to the limit at the start of the new rules era so it could reap bigger rewards longer term.

“We’ve had a couple of bits of unreliability, but that was kind of factored into our year this year,” added Permane.

“There was a massive change on the power unit, and a massive change on the gearbox. We knew there were going to be a few issues, but I think we all signed up for that.

“We knew that it may be potentially a bit tough, but it would release some significant performance. And it has done just that. So we’re super happy with the way things are going.”

Permane has praised the efforts being made by staff back at Alpine’s factory, who are consistently delivering improvements with new developments – which was proved by its new floor that came for Singapore.

“This is version four of our floor and in Austin it’s going to be the 4B,” he said. “We’ve got another update, but not quite as big as this one.

“It’s just the tunnel is working very, very well. We’re just finding lots of stuff. We had always planned an upgrade for Singapore, it was just double what we thought it was going…