Szafnauer: No personal vendetta against McLaren or Aston

Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer says losing drivers to McLaren and Aston Martin for 2023 hasn't made his team's rivalry with the latter a personal affair.

Last summer, Alpine planned on heading into this year's campaign with an unchanged line-up, with Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso.

But out of the blue, the Spaniard opted to switch his allegiance to Aston Martin, a move that compelled Alpine to promote its reserve driver Oscar Piastri to a full-time race seat alongside Ocon.

However, unbeknownst to Alpine, the 21-year-old Aussie had already signed a contract with McLaren. But the French outfit disputed the move and the case was eventually settled in favor of Piastri by the FIA's Contract Recognition Board.

Szafnauer was asked after Thursday's launch in London of Alpine's new A523 challenger if losing two drivers to McLaren and Aston Martin had fueled a personal desire of revenge against the Enstone squad's pair of midfield rivals.

"No, I want to beat them all," replied the Alpine team boss.

"What I want to do is focus on the things that we can control. What we control is the development of our car, both powertrain as well as aerodynamic development.

"Let’s do the best job we can and see what happens. But I don’t think we focus on beating one or two teams. We’ve got to try to beat all of them."

• Read also: Alpine boss wants 'more finishes, less retirements, more points'

Earlier this week, after pulling the covers off Aston Martin's new AMR23 contender, Alonso took a not-so-subtle dig at his former team, saying that his new outfit was not just "comfortable" finishing fourth in the championship, adding that contrary to others, "here there are no celebrations until we win".

Szafnauer responded to Alonso's innuendo by saying that last year the two-time world champion was just as happy as the next team member when Alpine beat McLaren to P4 in the Constructors' standings.

"I think when we did finish fourth, if you look back, he was as happy as everybody else who was part of the team," commented the American.

"When the year before you’re fifth and your ambition is to move up to fourth, it’s not easy to do. We had to beat McLaren. I’ve been to Woking and you walk by and they have a massive trophy cabinet, so they’re not easy to beat.

"So I think you have to celebrate those successes when you say, look, I want to be top four, I want to be fourth not fifth. I don’t think it’s shameful to say ‘we’ve done it and let’s celebrate’.

"For us, next year, if we can get much closer to third than we were this year, I’ll celebrate that too. If we’re closer and the gap isn’t that big, that means we’re making progress to where we want to go."

Szafnauer says that Alpine's new challenger is a "more competitive" machine compared to its predecessor but that only "time will tell" where its car sits in the pecking order this season.

"We’ve worked hard on developing the A523, combining all of our learnings from last season together with pure innovation to come up with what we believe is an exciting package," he said.

"This year, we have a more competitive car and the teams at both factories in Viry and Enstone have worked well to improve the overall reliability; something which did let us down at times last season.

"We continue to grow our workforce and I see a real spark of team spirit here and a high level of motivation from everyone to push this team forwards.

"Time will tell on where we stand in the championship order."

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