Pre-season testing report: the feedback from Alpine drivers
At the end of three days of testing in Bahrain, the Alpine drivers have shared their impressions. Both of them mention a solid foundation to work on for 2023.
Alpine hid its game during these tests. From an outsider’s perspective, the French team remained shy and only completed 352 laps over the three days. Nevertheless, reliability seems to be present as the cars did not encounter any major issues.
On their side, Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon seem satisfied with the work done on the Sakhir circuit. They confirm that the goal of the team was to test a multitude of settings rather than focusing on lap times.
(I) I think there are a lot of positive points. Of course, there are also things to improve. We clearly saw the strengths, and there weren’t really any surprises, but we mainly focused on ourselves, our car, and the things to improve. What I really like is that every time we change something on the car, the car reacts, there are differences. We try to make big changes to try to understand the car’s reactions a bit better. It gives us ideas, it gives us areas for development, and on my side, the things I want to improve on this car are very clear in my mind, to extract more performance from it. I think the foundation is there, we’ll be in the fight, and I think it’s going to be very close, as it usually is. It’s up to us to work, but I think we have a good foundation to work on at the beginning of the season, said Gasly to Canal+.
If some fans have shown concern or even a little disappointed by these first rounds on asphalt, Esteban Ocon, on the other hand, wanted to reassure them.
There is no need to worry. This is not the time to focus on lap times. We have tried many extreme adjustments and I think it was at that moment that they showed on television images of us bouncing, but honestly, I didn’t suffer from it. I suppose that’s why everyone is a bit concerned, but the car is clearly much better than last year.
“We are much more prepared than last year. Last year, we struggled a lot with the car, just to get it working on the track, and this year is not the case at all. We have almost achieved our goals on Pierre’s side and mine, so it’s definitely better,” he added for the official F1 website.
