The Enstone-based team has made great strides this year, and is currently locked in a close battle with McLaren for fourth place in the constructors’ championship, but Fernando Alonso is aware of his long-term ambitions.
As the teams weigh whether to continue devoting resources to the development of their current single-seaters or to focus more efforts on next year’s cars, the Spaniard suggests it would be a mistake to spend too much time on the 2022 A522.
The Asturian believes that the way a great team like Mercedes has bounced back so quickly shows that Alpine cannot afford to miss out on any opportunities next season if they want to aim for victories in the near future.
“I don’t think it will be that easy for us,” explained the Spanish driver. “They [Mercedes] have a huge structure and we knew they would come back sooner or later.”
“For us, it’s more of a medium/long-term program when we try to improve as much as them. So I think we should start working on next year’s car as early as not to compromise the next project,” said the two-time champion.
“The big teams can start working on next year’s car and at the same time, in parallel, continue to improve this year’s car,” he said. “But for other teams, this is more of a challenge.”
Alonso believes that Alpine have done a good job with their current car, as he suggested that the only area that needs immediate improvement is the slow corners .
“I think we’re going a little bit wrong in some corners,” he said. “I will say that low speed turns are not our strong point at the moment.”
“In Baku , with a lot of slow corners, we saw that some single-seaters were very strong. AlphaTauri finished fifth, and Aston Martin was also very strong. So on some circuits, those types of teams could resurface,” said the Spaniard.
“[We need] a bit of everything. I don’t think we have a weak point in the car that we need to fix, but there are areas to improve everywhere,” he acknowledged.
Alpine have been quite aggressive with their development plan this season, with team principal Otmar Szafnauer acknowledging that they will continue to add updates until his team hits the budget limit.
Asked if it was a positive that the push they were giving to the upgrades was giving better results on track, the American said: “It’s very encouraging.”
“We said at the beginning of this year that this is it. The learning curve in the tunnel is still very steep, so we have to take advantage of it and continue to increase the performance of the car. We will continue to do so until the money runs out,” he said. the head of the Enstone team.
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