Alpine Formula 1 bosses Bruno Famin and Matt Harman both believe the reliability issues that plagued the team in 2022 have been solved with the new 2023 car. The team took an aggressive approach to their power unit for last season, with a development freeze meaning that upgrades are no longer allowed until the rules reset in 2026. This means that suppliers can now only make power unit upgrades for the purpose of reliability. While the move did pay off and the team secured fourth in the Constructors', they had a poor reliability record, with former driver Fernando Alonso bearing the brunt of the failures - something that left him rather unhappy. But at the launch of the new A523 machine, Famin and Harman explained how the team believe they have rectified the issues.
"Almost all the problems we had [in 2022] were due to external components, [like the water pump]," engine chief Famin explained when asked by RacingNews365.com if the team had to tune the engines down because of the reliability concerns. "There was nothing linked to the turbocharger or the [Internal Combustion Engine], we never reduced the power of the engine in 2022. "We have just worked on the auxiliaries to make sure we could reduce the risk as much as we can." Alonso - who has departed for Aston Martin - suffered four late season retirements in 2022, all of which linked to the engine, with some related to the water pump, including leaks and drops in pressure. Technical director Harman believes the team have identified and found the "root cause" of the problem. "Fernando bore the brunt of them unfortunately, but we had issues generally with some areas of the car," he explained when asked by RacingNews365.com if solutions had been found to the problems. "We understood those quite quickly, we contained them as best we could in the A522, but we've actually got to the root cause and have countermeasures [in place] for the A523. "We're really happy, we've run a lot of mileage on the dyno, and that allows us to get up a real big [amount] of confidence with the car."
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