Alpine labels new floor a 'very significant step' for A523

Alpine has called the new floor design that it has introduced at Spa a "very significant step" for its A523 machine.

After a well-publicized disappointing start to its 2023 campaign, that sparked the ire of former Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi, the team enjoyed a string of good results, including Esteban Ocon's podium in Monaco.

But the Enstone squad's performance has fallen in recent races relative to its direct rivals, while misfortune crushed the team in Hungary last weekend where both cars were collateral damage as a result of the chaos unleashed by Alfa's Zhou Guanyu at the first corner of the race at the Hungaroring.

Alpine's development programme saw the team introduce a new front wing at Silverstone, but sporting director Alan Permane says the A523's new floor is not complimentary to that update.

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"The floor is independent of the front wing," said Permane, quoted by Motorsport.com.

"It’s important because we need to keep putting downforce on the car and moving forward and going faster, basically.

"So it's very important. It isn't linked to the front wing, but it's a very significant step for us."

Friday's single practice session at Spa will be crucial for Alpine to evaluate its new floor, but dry running seems unlikely based on current forecasts that are calling for a soggy 48 hours in the Belgian Ardennes.

"We will still bring the floor as it is more performance and it is around two tenths of a second per lap, whatever it is, a new floor, so we will put it on," said Alpine team boss Otmar Szafnauer.

"But you are right, we have a short period of time to assess and analyse it, but on that side of it we have good tools to assess it.

"The floor will be instrumented so that we can see if it is sucking more, and how many points of downforce we get out of it."

Esteban Ocon is also hopeful of extracting more performance from Alpine's charger based on its updated floor.

"Feet on the ground at the moment, seeing what it's going to bring," he said on Friday at Spa.

"Obviously it's going to be the important… understanding it as well. It's going to be tricky with this format this weekend, especially how very few tyres we have on the wets or in general for the weekend.

"So yeah, just want to see if it brings us closer to the points so we are going to be able to score again. That's what we want to be achieving."

Speaking of scoring points, Alpine current sits sixth in F1's Constructors standings, having been overtaken lately by McLaren following the latter's remarkable performance upswing.

The French outfit's initial target for this season was to finish fourth, an objective that it will be hard pressed to fulfil.

But Permane nevertheless hopes the team can finish its year with the fourth fastest car on the grid.

"That's our target. That's our plan. And we will just keep developing as hard as we can to try and achieve that," he said.

"There's definitely a large upgrade for Singapore, but I think there'll certainly be smaller stuff for example in Monza as well."

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