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The Alpine team principal shares how Aston Martin 'shortcut' its way to the front of the grid. Aston Martin was struggling to even be competitive in the midfield last season. The team started the season as the 9th fastest car. However, this time around, things are completely different.
The team has a new driver in Fernando Alonso, as Sebastian Vettel retired from the sport last season. Not only that, but the car is a massive upgrade from what the team had last season.
This has helped the team secure four podiums in five races. All of this has, however, left Alpine in the midfield. The French team was the best of the rest last season and was hoping to close the gap.
That has not happened, however, as Alpine finds itself in a position similar to where it was last season in the pecking order. Talking about how Aston Martin made its jump, Alpine team principal Otmar Szafneur shared what he felt was the shortcut to joining the front of the grid.
According to Otmar, Aston Martin hired some key personnel from teams like Red Bull and Mercedes, which helped it gain a significant competitive edge. Alluding to how Alpine was hoping to do something similar, Otmar told racingnews365:
"Aston hired a lot of people from Red Bull and Mercedes, a lot of them, not just the two that you know about in Dan Fallows and Eric Blandin. There's two things you need to do if you want to shortcut the process. Red Bull have an aerodynamic team of 50 people, it's not one, but the guy who sits on top of the 50, he gets all the ideas to do this, to do that and he gets all the learnings from those 50 people."
He added:
"Then when you displace him, guess what? In his brain is all that learning from all that time and you shortcut the process of where you're going."
Alpine reveals plans on expanding the team
The Alpine team principal revealed plans to expand the aero team even more and make it more competitive with Red Bull in the coming months.
He said:
"That one thing you need to do to shortcut, but then once you've got that, you still need that team of 50 underneath to continue the development, because you can only shortcut it for one spot at a time. To continue, you need both things. We're going to shortcut it. When I said Red Bull have 50 people, we're at 38 and want to grow to 45. So we have spots for seven or eight senior aerodynamicists that can help."
The French team is looking at a disappointing season in 2023, as the best result it can hope for is P5 in the championship, especially if we consider the kind of gap that the top 4 teams have already built.
