Alpine F1 team boss Otmar Szafnauer feels his team's P4 finish in the 2022 Constructors' Championship is where they 'deserve' to be. The French outfit finished the 2022 season with 173 points.
Responding to questions from RacingNews365, Szafnauer said:
"I think fourth is probably where we deserve to be. We should have a [few] more points than we do – we had some reliability issues. I look forward to next year fixing those."
He added:
"We should have a more reliable powertrain next year, even though some of the issues we had weren't really with the powertrain. They were with the ancillary bits, but we have to redesign those and fix it."
In 2021, the Enstone-based team finished P5 with 155 points, behind the top 3 of Mercedes, Red Bull, and Ferrari respectively, and fourth-placed McLaren, who scored 275 points. The P4 position last season, despite the points difference, looked like a battle between Alpine and McLaren, especially after Esteban Ocon secured a topsy-turvy but deserved win at the Hungarian GP. In 2022, however, the French squad jumped ahead of McLaren, who finished the season with 159 points.
Alpine will start the 2023 season with a new set of drivers as Fernando Alonso departs the Enstone-based outfit to join Aston Martin. Pierre Gasly will fill his spot after his move from AlphaTauri to create F1's first all-French driver line-up since Olivier Panis and Franck Lagorce drove for Ligier in 1994.
Alpine boss admits Fernando Alonso had reliability issues with his car
Alpine boss Otmar Szafnauer was "not happy" with the failures in Fernando Alonso's car in the 2022 season.
Alonso's woes throughout the season were for all to see as his team's "reliability issues" were being blamed. He had to retire for the sixth time this year in the season finale at the 2022 F1 Abu Dhabi GP.
When asked if he understood Alonso's frustrations, Szafnauer said:
"For sure he had more failures than Esteban did, and it was always at times when he could have scored good points. So yeah, he does. I too am not happy that for example in Melbourne, I think he could have been maybe on pole position, but he had an issue in qualifying. So for sure that’s disappointing."
Fernando Alonso was left frustrated in the 2022 season after his car failed to finish six times. The Spaniard claimed that he had lost an estimated 60 points in 2022 through mechanical issues. Alonso's stint at Alpine, however, is over now and the 41-year-old will be a part of Aston Martin for the 2023 F1 season, as he replaces Sebastian Vettel, who retired from the sport as a legend.
