Alpine Not Where It 'Wanted To Be' Says Interim Team Principal Bruno Famin

Tuesday, 12 December 2023 at 17:00

Updated at Wednesday, 13 December 2023 at 16:09

The interim team principal of the French team, Bruno Famin, reflected on Alpine's position at the end of the 2023 season.

The Alpine F1 team finished the 2023 season in sixth place in the Constructors' Championship, a kind of a no man's land as the French team scored 160 points less than Aston Martin in fifth place but 92 points more than Williams in seventh place.

Bruno Famin, who stepped from the position of vice president of Alpine Motorsport to become interim team principal of the team told the media as quoted by motorsport.com:

"The truth is that we're not where we wanted to be, for sure. That's very clear. But I think with the changes we made mid-season we untapped some potential in the people, I think people are much freer to propose things, to improve."

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Famin discussed the internal changes made inside the team to unlock its full potential. These things are often not measured easily, but he believes the team made progress.

"I think that's especially true on the track side, where immediately I saw a change in the mindset. We promoted for example, [team manager] Rob Cherry and [chief mechanic] Jason Milligan, they are doing a very good job in proposing improvements, in making sure that their guys also propose things."

Alpine separated its ways with several key figures in the lead of the team, including former team principal Otmar Szafnauer, CTO Pat Fry, and sporting director Alan Permane. Famin believes these changes helped to uncap the team's potential.

"I think all this potential was a bit capped until the end of July, and I'm very happy with that. It's true for the garage, it's true also for the track engineering, it's true for the strategy, and we are daring things we were not daring before."

The French team scored 63 out of 120 points in the Championship in the second part of the season, which suggests there has not been a significant improvement, but the team at least kept its pace with improving the rest of the field. Famin added:

"I'm very happy with that mindset. Of course, the car is still not the one we would like. But we scored more points per race in the second half of the season than in the first one, but we need to keep pushing to develop this momentum."