Alpine logged two third places this season, but slipped from fourth to sixth in the world championship.
The team has accepted there’s little to be gained from developing the current car, and has focused instead on wholesale changes for next year’s model.
Like other teams it also faces the challenge of creating a 2024 car that will also have to form the basis of the 2025 contender as R&D efforts will be switched towards the new regulations in 2026.
Harman has admitted the team didn’t make as much progress with the A523 as it had hoped.
“We didn’t we didn’t do as well as we did on A522,” said Harman when asked by Autosport about the development path of this year’s car.
“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.
“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.
“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.”
Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images
Esteban Ocon, Alpine A523
Alpine was locked in sixth place in the world championship well before the end of the season, and with little to fight for that helped the team make an early switch to its 2024 model.
“We knew we weren’t quite where we wanted to be this year, we knew that our developments were plateauing a little bit on the car, because of limitations that we had,” said Harman.
“When you know that you’re reaching that point, you’re better off understanding where you are in the championship, and think to yourself ‘let’s move over’, and we moved over reasonably quickly.
“Mechanically, we started the car in week 45 of 2022. The mechanical side of things in terms of chassis and those pieces of equipment and getting a lot of mass out the car, we started that very early. That’s something we do very regularly now. But it’s probably earlier than…
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