Alpine promises radical changes after 2023 failure

Alpine has promised to bring a "completely new" Formula 1 car to the 2024 season after failing to consolidate fourth in the 2023 standings.

A strong first year to the ground effects era in 2022 had the team finish fourth on 173 points, having made good progress with upgrades and development, but this could not be translated across to the A523 machine of 2023.

Despite scoring two podiums - one apiece for Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly - the team fell to sixth and hauled just 120 points, two places and 53 points worse off in a year that saw the departures of CEO Laurent Rossi, Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer, Sporting Director Alan Perane and Chief Technical Officer Pat Fry.

Technical Director Matt Harman remained and has insisted that wide-spread changes to cars will not just be a feature of Alpine, but across the grid in 2024.

Sweeping changes at Alpine

"I think we got a little bit outgunned aerodynamically by some other cars," Harman told media including RacingNews365.

"We did make some ground at the start of the season on the people we were targeting, but there were some notable teams that had made a bigger step than we did.

"We didn’t really get to grips with the car until the second, third, maybe fourth event.

"That’s quite unlike us. We have a very capable trackside engineering team – in conjunction with the factory, [but] it took us a while to get to grips with that.

"It’s not because it’s difficult to set up, it’s because the window is so narrow – so you’re having to make compromises. It’s tricky.

"We didn’t do as well as we did on the A522 – we had a great year that year, every time we touched the development of the car, we put load on, and we took a lot of weight off the car – there was a lot of performance to be had.

"That’s why for [the 2024 car], we have had to unlock some real estate again, which is why the car is completely new from front to back.

"You’ll see that up and down the grid because the car has to last for a couple of years while we look for the future.”