Alpine: 2024 car is completely new

After spending the 2023 F1 season in no-man's land, Alpine are looking to break clear from the midfield and try to catch up with the front of the grid.

Alpine finished sixth in the 2023 F1 Constructors' Championship with 120, 160 behind Aston Martin in fifth and 92 points ahead of Williams in seventh.

The team went through a tumultuous time, as they parted ways with Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer and long serving Sporting Director Alan Permane, while CEO Laurent Rossi was sacked days earlier.

Pat Fry also jumped ship to Williams soon after Szafnauer's departure while the team's Director of Race Expansion Projects Davide Brivio was also leaving at the end of 2023, becoming the latest senior figure to leave Enstone.

Bruno Famin currently occupies the Team Principal role on interim basis, while Matt Harman became the new Technical Director after the shakeup.

Harman discussed Alpine's disappointing 2023 F1 season and car, while revealing plans for the upcoming season, speaking to Motorsport.com.

Harman went back to the 2022 F1 season as he analyzed the team's situation in terms of car development, he said: "We didn't do as well as we did on A522 [2022 Alpine].

"I think we had a great year [in 2022], that year, I think every time we touched the development of the car, we put load, and we took a lot of weight off the car as well. So there was there was a lot of performance to be had.

"As we've got on that asymptote, and we're getting closer to the sorts of loads that we're seeing now, it's becoming more and more tricky, and you've got to get into more and more detail.

"And that means we have to be a little bit more careful about how we invest our money. And so I don't think this year has been as successful as the 522.

"I think that's why for the following year's car, we've had to really unlock some real estate again, which is why the car is completely new, front-to-back," he revealed.

"So I think you'll see that up and down the grid, because the car needs to last for a couple of years while we look for the future," Harman added.

The new Alpine tech boss admitted the team did not get their sums right with their 2023 challenger, the A523, pointing out that the decision to start the 2024 project came quite early.

He said: "We knew we weren't quite where we wanted to be this year, we knew that our developments were plateauing a little bit on the car, because of limitations that we had.

"When you know that you're reaching that point, you're better off understanding where you are in the championship, and think to yourself ‘let's move over’, and we moved over reasonably quickly.

"Mechanically, we started the car in week 45 of 2022. The mechanical side of things in terms of chassis and those pieces of equipment and getting a lot of mass out the car, we started that very early.

"That's something we do very regularly now. But it's probably earlier than we've ever done," he reckoned.

As for the weaknesses of the A523, Harman said: "I think its weakness is it needs to operate in a very narrow window.

"And if you go to a circuit where it's has a particular surface condition or a high level of ride content or something, then we can find ourselves in a position where it's more of a struggle, and the drivers don't enjoy the car.

"That's one of its weaknesses at the moment, that it is quite narrow. So we need to broaden it a little bit. We thought we broadened it enough going into the season, but clearly, we didn't. So that's what we're working on," Harman concluded.