Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi says he got the reaction he was looking for from the team after Esteban Ocon’s podium in the Monaco Grand Prix.
Rossi was critical of the way Alpine had been performing in 2023, highlighting execution errors and car performance as being below his expectations while also increasing the pressure on team principal Otmar Szafnauer. His comments came prior to the race in Miami, and after a double-points finish in Florida the next race in Monaco saw Ocon secure third and Pierre Gasly seventh as Alpine completed a faultless weekend that included a wider performance he was proud of.
“Absolutely (it was the right response), my comments were just meant to do that,” Rossi told SpeedCity Broadcasting. “To remind everyone that we shouldn’t be happy with scrappy points here and there because we can do better, this team can do much better.
“The remarkable amount of work and skills that were put in in 2021 and 2022 to get the fifth and fourth position was not visible again. Not that they didn’t put in the work, but a couple of things were not doing justice to what they’re doing. I think they showed that they can do the work the way they used to and when they do then they score the points.
“So, very good work from the team. A long way to go — it’s going to be a long season. We are still in fifth, which is not our objective, but at least we fight with a decent showing, so this is important.”
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Rossi believes Alpine still has more performance to come in Barcelona this weekend given the scale of the update it introduced in Monaco.
“Yeah, we brought some upgrades to Imola which didn’t happen; they probably worked a bit in Monaco but it’s a very different track so we couldn’t really assess the full potential of those upgrades. So we’re hoping that they’re going to work also in Barcelona.
“There’s good stuff in the pipeline. Certainly the gradient of development is not as strong as last year for all the teams because we’re getting more mature around these new regulations. Even though we are reaching a bit of a point where we’re starting to max out that area that’s flat for everyone, we were looking for a tenth last year, maybe this year everyone is looking for a hundredth and that’s going to be the key.
“We have plenty of little upgrades coming up until the summer almost at every race. So I’m confident, I know the team can do it. They made us proud (in Monaco). They certainly made me proud, so that’s good.”