The CEO of Alpine, Laurent Rossi, has reiterated the team's aims of bridging the gap to the established front-runners, and hopes the team can challenge for podium positions in 2023. Alpine are at the start of their third season of their self-assigned '100-race plan' to bring the Enstone team towards the front of the grid. After finishing as the fourth-best team in 2022, Alpine have been bullish in their expectations of reducing the gap to the leaders this season.
When asked about Alpine's targets for 2023, Rossi reiterated the length of time required to bring a team in contention for regular frontrunning positions, but said that it was "natural" for the team to be looking towards podium finishes this season. "Two years ago I said, we are on a 100 race journey, and I maintain that. It takes time to turn around a ship like that to basically get to where Red Bull is," Rossi commented on the Beyond the Grid podcast. "All these teams have taken like a good three, four years, five years, for some Ferrari, even longer to get back to the podiums, and so we are on this path, hopefully. "The first two years of that kind of four or five year plan are going well. They delivered according to our expectations. We finished fifth in '21, fourth in '22. "So it's only natural now we're looking towards the other spots up there on the podium. But I have to say we are also very well aware that the gap to third is like it's big. "I think this year, which is a critical one, we need to show that we are capable of getting closer to these guys. Of course, to beat them would be ideal. So everyone has that as a stretch target, a moon-shot, I would say, but the minimum is to finish fourth and start bridging that gap to third."
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