Laurent Rossi, Alpine’s great ‘boss’ was very critical of how things are going at the beginning of the season. Neither Esteban Ocon nor Pierre Gasly they have even come close to the middle zone of the Formula 1 grid. And that caused comments such as that there were “amateur things” in the management.
Now Otmar Szafnauer, Alpine F1 director, has reacted to these words. He did it in Miami, where for the first time his two drivers finished in the points (Gasly was eighth and Ocon ninth).
“I saw that something of that came out in the press, yes, but I haven’t had time to read it. It has not been an easy start to the season. I don’t know, maybe that’s why he made those comments…”, said the one from the French team.
He prefers not to think about it and focus on the development work on the car: “The hardest thing to do in F1 is to make sure you get 100% performance out of the car. And that’s not happening. There are 100 people here, 1000 at home and 900 who are working on performance.”
“Most of the work that affects performance is in Enstone and Viry. Here it’s just about making sure we don’t make any mistakes and that there are no engine fires. We have a lot of experience, technicians and engineers of the highest level, and we put a lot of pressure on ourselves,” said the Romanian.
Alpine occupies the sixth place in the constructors’ world championship. Even behind McLaren, whose start to the year is being absolutely disastrous. To get an idea of the terrible performance of the Alpine, you only have to compare its points with those of Fernando Alonsonow in Aston Martin: 14 for 75 of the Asturian pilot.
