F1 News
Szafnauer on Alpine's 2022 – 'We deserve to be fourth'
Alpine Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer says his team deserved their fourth place finish in the 2022 F1 Constructors' Championship.
Just as in 2021, the Enstone squad finished some way behind Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes, but rose one place to fourth place in the overall standings after leapfrogging McLaren following a season-long battle.
Alpine had scored an unlikely win in 2021, with Esteban Ocon's surprising but deserved victory at a chaotic Hungarian Grand Prix, and though the Enstone squad did not manage a top-three finish in 2022, they still increased their overall points total to 173, up from 155 in 2021.
"I think fourth is probably where we deserve to be," Szafnauer said in response to a question from TheFOXposts.Com.
"We should have a [few] more points than we do – we had some reliability issues. I look forward to next year fixing those.
"We should have a more reliable powertrain next year, even though some of the issues we had weren't really with the powertrain. They were with the ancillary bits, but we have to redesign those and fix it."
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Alonso critical of Alpine reliability
Between them, Alpine's 2022 drivers Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon had six separate mechanical retirements over the course of the season, comparing unfavourably to Mercedes, who suffered just one mechanical failure at the last round in Abu Dhabi.
Alonso, who is leaving Alpine to join Aston Martin for 2023, has in recent weeks been particularly scathing about the Enstone team's poor reliability, saying that he had lost an estimated 60 points in 2022 through mechanical issues.
Replacing Alonso at Alpine in 2023 will be Pierre Gasly, who moves over from AlphaTauri to create F1's first all-French driver line-up since Olivier Panis and Franck Lagorce drove for Ligier in 1994.
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