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Alpine team principal Otmar Szafneur has shared a rather stoic response to team CEO Laurent Rossi's shark remarks against the team. During the 2023 F1 Miami GP weekend, reports emerged of a rather surprisingly harsh interview by Rossi with French outlet Canal+. In the interview, some harsh words like "amateur" and "dilletante" were used for the team by the CEO.
Alpine's poor start to the season was put under the microscope by Rossi, and in an exclusive with F1's official website, he doubled down and even targeted team principal Otmar Szafneur.
While Otmar did not comment on the statements by Rossi earlier, he has shared a somewhat stoic response in which he said that the changes brought to the team are going to take time to reflect.
He said to the media:
“Changes were in progress already, it just takes time. We all know this is a huge team effort, and we have very talented engineers that work really hard within the regulations. We’re capped on 80 hours, we’re capped on how much time we can spend in the [wind] tunnel or CFD."
He added:
"It’s not a matter of working harder, or working more, like it was in the past. It’s a matter of quality, and getting the right quality takes time. We’ve got the right plans in place.”
"We hit most of our targets, but not all of them": Alpine team principal
Doubling down while defending Alpine, Otmar said that the team was focused on developing the car through the season. The former Force India chief added that the team had hit most of the targets in the winter, if not all of them.
He said:
“We’re working hard to make sure that we deliver on improving this year’s car as best as we can. I think we did a good job last year with in-season improvements, and we have to do the same again."
He continued:
"I think we’re not happy because we’re not Red Bull, however, within our immediate competition, we have made gains on both Ferrari and Mercedes. So we hit most of our targets, but not all of them over the winter.”
In all likelihood, Alpine needs a more stable weekend to showcase its true potential. The team was able to do it in Miami and will be hoping to replicate it in Monaco.
In Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon, the team has two strong drivers that can be very consistent; all it needs is the ability to string together a few clean weekends.
