Esteban Ocon says that he has been hard at work testing Alpine’s 2024 contender in the team’s simulator at Enstone since September, the earliest he has ever driven a future car.
This season, Alpine has fallen short of its objectives which called for the team to finish its 2023 campaign among the top four in F1’s Constructors’ standings.
While Alpine’s A523 has lacked consistency and failed to match the performance of its top midfield rivals, the team itself underwent a significant management overhaul during the summer, shaking up the structure and leadership.
This seismic shift saw the departure of Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer and Sporting Director Alan Permane, along with Chief Technical Officer Pat Fry.
These departures marked a turning point for the team, as they sought to address ongoing challenges and pursue a new direction.
The restructuring brought about a new interim leadership team, with Bruno Famin, Vice President of Alpine Motorsports, stepping in as Interim Team Principal.
He was joined by Julian Rouse, Interim Sporting Director, and Matt Harman, head of the technical team at Enstone.
This new group faced the task of stabilizing the team and charting a course for future success.
“Obviously the team is very well aware of where they have to go, in terms of improving the current situation,” Ocon said in Brazil recently.
“I’ve been driving the car quite a bit in the simulator, the 2024 model. Quite early on, compared to usual.
©Alpine
“So that has been a very good thing, we’ve been able to tackle some issues and to have some early feedback, in comparison to really driving it end of November or December, we were able to do that early September.
“But, until you put the car down, you don’t really know where that’s going to be exactly.
“We can compare the two cars, it’s been interesting, but there’s still going to be months of development and wind tunnel time during the winter, and that’s going to be different to how we test the car at the shakedown but also different to how it starts, I guess, at the first race.”
Ocon said that Alpine’s early start on the development of its car is in line with the team’s efforts to improve its situation moving forward.
“It’s just the continuity of improving little things,” he added. “There’s a feeling that we could get the lead in some things that we didn’t do probably as well last year.
“And it’s very good that we’ve done so because it makes it… having more feedback to the engineers early, because you don’t produce the parts yet, then you have time to probably revert on some aspects that, you know, you decided.
“And to be honest it’s probably the earliest I’ve driven next year’s car, ever. So that’s good.”
Ocon acknowledged the limitations of sim testing but insisted it was the only tool at the team’s disposal to put its future car through its virtual paces ahead of next February’s winter testing.
“I mean… it’s never perfect, I guess,” he said. “There can be some issues at times, we’ve experienced that, especially more with the new cars I would say, more last year.
“But that’s the only tool we have so we have to trust it as much as possible.
“Because we can’t test, and that’s the only representative feeling that I’m going to have with the car until you get to test it, I don’t know, in Silverstone or Barcelona or whatever.”
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