Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer says there’s nothing personal between his outfit and rivals Aston Martin and McLaren, who lured drivers away from them last year.
Fernando Alonso surprised Alpine by signing a deal with Aston Martin as the summer break began last year. When Alpine moved to promote reserve driver Oscar Piastri in his place, they discovered he’d been poached by McLaren.
The dispute over the latter was especially painful for Alpine, as they announced Piastri as their new driver only for him to deny he would race for them. Formula 1’s Contract Recognition Board ultimately ruled in McLaren’s favour, leaving Alpine to sign Pierre Gasly as Alonso’s replacement.
But asked whether he felt a personal motivation to defeat the two teams who lured drivers away from him last year, Szafnauer said: “No, I want to beat them all.”
“What I want to do is focus on the things that we can control,” he told media including RaceFans at the launch of Alpine’s A523 yesterday. “What we control is the development of our car, both powertrain as well as aerodynamic development.
“Let’s do the best job we can and see what happens. But I don’t think we focus on beating one or two teams. We’ve got to try to beat all of them.”
Alonso appeared to take a swipe at his former team during Aston Martin’s launch earlier this week when he said his new team were not content with lower-order finishing positions. Szafnauer said Alonso had never questioned Alpine celebrating their fourth and fifth place championship positions during his two seasons with them.
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“No, he never raised it,” said Szafnauer. “I think when we did finish fourth, if you look back, he was as happy as everybody else who was part of the team.
“When the year before you’re fifth and your ambition is to move up to fourth, it’s not easy to do. We had to beat McLaren. I’ve been to Woking and you walk by and they have a massive trophy cabinet, so they’re not easy to beat.
“So I think you have to celebrate those successes when you say, look, I want to be top four, I want to be fourth not fifth. I don’t think it’s shameful to say ‘we’ve done it and let’s celebrate’.
“For us, next year, if we can get much closer to third than we were this year, I’ll celebrate that too. If we’re closer and the gap isn’t that big, that means…
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