Alpine F1 CEO Laurent Rossi has made clear his team’s desire to recruit Otmar Szafnauer. He asserts that the goal was indeed a simpler management structure, following the departure of Marcin Budkowski and the change of position of David Preview.
“It was clear that a profile like that of Otmar was essential to the technical and operational guidance between Enstone, Viry and the track.” Russian said. “It’s going to be a more dangerous season. Ottmar has a uniform and uniform profile, and he was the big missing link.”
“The team is stagnant and I think we were on a near-negative slope. Challenges ahead.”
Rumor linking Alpine to Real Madrid, the manufacturer that is a sponsor of the French team. But Rossi refuses, stating that he would prefer the football club to be the sponsor: “I don’t think the Alps have enough money to sponsor Real Madrid. If an agreement is reached, we will paint the car white.”
Reliability is no longer a priority over performance
Rossi explains that Renault’s new engine is designed with a lower priority in terms of reliability. The team realizes there can be breakage risks, but they wanted to ensure a powerful motor. And this person has already been paid a lot.
“The approach in the past has been to lower the engine performance a bit when we knew we were hitting the peak, rather than a more reliable engine that wasn’t fast enough.
“We’re going to do it differently now and the good news is we’ve already done thousands of dynamic miles with this new engine over the past few weeks. It’s a real game-changer for us.”
The engine has been completely redesigned. When I say brand new, they are even conceptually. First, it’s the split turbo system, but this is just one of the visual elements that will make it more compact, allowing us to bring it closer to the driver, thereby changing the car’s center of gravity.
“It’s lighter and able to work in a much wider range of conditions, temperatures and pressures. So it’s really changing the bar for us. Hopefully that will allow us to catch up and fill the gap with the best.”
Update to rumors about major engine problems
There were rumors of problems with the development of the power unit, but Rossi says that is no longer the case. However, he does not hide that some stages of development were complex.
“It’s either reliability or performance, because you usually struggle to get both right away. So you have to know where to pay.”
“During the year of development, we had a few moments where reliability wasn’t there, but that is our choice because the only leverage we will have this year, after the freeze, is reliability.”
“So I told the team: You’re pushing too far and I don’t care. Being reliable and being comfortable with a reliable engine that doesn’t deliver.”
“That was the approach of the past, by the way. So we pushed the other way. The good news is we’ve covered thousands of miles with this new PU in the past few weeks.”
Alpine F1 will introduce its A522 this evening at approximately 6:30pm, to be followed live, with video, news and photos, at Nextgen-Auto.com.
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