Alpine sticking to 2023 goal of being 'fourth best team'

Alpine F1 technical director Matt Harman says he sees no reason why the Enstone squad shouldn’t be able to reach its end-of-year goal of being the fourth best team on the grid.

Ahead of the start of its 2023 season, Alpine's plan as proclaimed by former CEO Laurent Rossi was to finish fourth in F1's Constrictors' Championship while reducing the performance gap to the sport's front runners.

Midway through its campaign, the French outfit is sixth in the standings, 137 points adrift from fourth-placed team Ferrari and well behind its direct rivals, including McLaren, in terms of its performance level.

While falling short of its own expectations on the track, Alpine is also dealing with significant turmoil behind the scenes in the wake of the departures after Spa of team principal Otmar Szafnauer and sporting director Alan Permane.

• Read also: Szafnauer critical of Alpine's 'lack of understanding' of F1

Since last May's Monaco Grand Prix and Esteban Ocon's podium in the Principality, Alpine's performance has undeniably slumped. Harman offered a few reasons for the downturn.

"We can’t bring major upgrades to every race," said the British engineer.

"At the start of the season, we threw a lot of new parts into the fray. Our competitors were later. So we just took a little breather.

"Our third development phase began with the front wing, which was continued in Spa with a new underbody. We hope that this will also have an impact on the results soon.

"We haven’t changed our goals. We want to be the fourth-best team and I see no reason why we shouldn’t be able to do that by the end of the season."

To help achieve that lofty target, Harman says Alpine will continue to introduce updates in the back half of the season. But the Briton also insists that its 2024 programme is already well underway.

"You’ll see upgrades even after the summer break," he assured.

"We started on the new car in week 40 of last year, before the 2023 car had its first race. This is so common in our business today.

"The design process for the A524 is already in full swing. After the summer break, we will sit down and decide when to allocate the bulk of our resources to the coming year."

In the interim, Alpine's current development schedule will unfold well within the team's $135 million budget cap threshold.

"We got our new car up and running on the budget we were given," Harman stated. "That’s why we didn’t have to cut anything from our development budget. We’re still on schedule.

"Also because we do almost everything in-house. We budget for an underbody that will deliver X lap times, which is cheaper than having it made outsourced."

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