“Nobody was seeing us anywhere above eighth position”: Alpine Boss Laurent Rossi describes the horrors of their initial 2022 woes
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By surpassing McLaren in the 2022 F1 Constructors’ Championship standings and snatching the P4 position, the French team of Alpine has wowed every Formula 1 pundit as well as the fans. The team, led by Laurent Rossi, was only formed in 2021 following the rebranding of Renault to promote the company’s sport car line-up, and they have achieved a great feat in a very short time. They ended their run in 2022 with 173 points, making their difference with McLaren of 14 points.
Represented by the powerful duo of Esteban Ocon and Fernando Alonso on the racetrack, Alpine has managed to make a mark in the 2022 Championship campaign. But in the upcoming season, Alonso will be shifting to Aston Martin and Pierre Gasly will replace him at the French team. Gasly has gathered a lot of experience having driven for AlphaTauri for four years and his short stint at Red Bull has also proven his mettle. Thus, it seems like things are looking up for Alpine right now but their Team Principal has said this was not the case at the start of the 2022 season.
According to Laurent Rossi, the Alpine racecar were lagging behind their competitors at the pre-season testing by a huge extent, and noone took them for a serious competitor. But in the end, they managed to improve their performance and they made use of well-planned tactics to become the team that is the “best of the rest” as they got the P4 position after the top 3 teams in the standings, that is, Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes.
Laurent Rossi said reliability issues had plagued Alpine during the start of the 2022 F1 season
According to Team Principal Laurent Rossi, Alpine’s P4 finish in the Championship Standings might not let out the fact that they had considerable trouble with their performance at the very beginning of the year. The team had the third least mileage going into the second test in Bahrain, and that proved to be a challenge. He said, “We started the season in bad shape. I mean, we arrived in Barcelona, in shambles, I could say, and then the idea was to develop as late as we can, because it was a brand new car.“
Rossi also said, “And then from there, to try and make our way up the grid. Nobody was seeing us anywhere above eighth position, I remember back then.”
Thanks to Alpine’s excellent 2022 Championship campaign, the team has a lot to prove in the upcoming year. They will have to keep their spot as the fourth best team in the field above McLaren and Aston Martin with the new lineup of Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly. Now, it only remains to be seen if they manage to keep up their results and prove their worth in the F1 2023 season.
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Riddhi Mondal
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