Otmar Szafnauer, the Team Principal of the BWT Alpine F1 Team, feels the unreliability issues that have affected the team during the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season are, whilst unfortunate, justified due to their aims of making their power unit more competitive.
Renault said prior to the season that they had focused their development programme on performance rather than reliability, and the team has seen an improvement in pace during 2022 that has seen them rise to fourth place in the Constructors’ Championship with two race weekends to go.
However, they have left plenty of points on the table due to reliability issues, with the latest seeing Fernando Alonso retire whilst running seventh in the Mexico City Grand Prix after an engine related problem, meaning they only lead the McLaren F1 Team by seven points.
Szafnauer believes the issues that have cost Alonso and Esteban Ocon points during the current season can be resolved ahead of the 2023 campaign, and the pain that the retirements are currently causing will be rewarded in the future.
“We mustn’t forget that at the beginning of the year we set out – and this was before I was here, but I think it was the right decision on the powertrain side – to err on the side of performance,” Szafnauer is quoted of saying by Motorsport.com
“Because the powertrain was going to be frozen. So we made a conscious decision to push the performance envelope and fix reliability issues as we got to them because the FIA allows that. So that was a conscious and strategic decision.
“And now when we face them, we can fix them. We didn’t do it on purpose to not be reliable. But if you have to err on that side, you push the performance boundary, because you can’t add performance now until 2026, you can fix reliability issues.
“And we can do it over the winter. So strategically, I think it was the right thing to do. And we still have two races left to finish in fourth. I think we can do that.”
Szafnauer says the aim in 2022 is to finish ahead of McLaren in the Constructors’ Championship, and it doesn’t matter if it is by a large margin or a small one, as long as it happens.
However, he believes they are on a good trajectory with the power unit, and with reliability fixes continuing to occur, it can only be good news for Alpine.
“No, not at this point,” Szafnauer said. “And then over the winter, we’ll make even more reliability improvements. You can’t improve the performance, it is what it is. And we’ll be better off.
“But we’ve got to remember this powertrain has to last until 2026. So for sure, it was the right strategy.
“I think we’re on a good trajectory. And let’s see what next year brings. But the short term is reliability in the next few races, finish strong, and I think our performance will be there.”
Szafnauer believes the engine department of the Alpine team, based in Viry-Chatillon in France, knows what the task in hand is, and the fixes they’ve had to implement to prevent even more reliability issues proves they have the knowledge and ability to improve the power unit.
“I was asking them about the [Mexico] cylinder failure,” he said. “And then although I spent seven and a half years at Honda powertrains, they’ve got a much deeper understanding and they’ll figure it out.
“But like I said, strategically that’s what we set out to do. Every time we have an issue, we fix it. It doesn’t come back. So this was a little bit different than what we had in Singapore.”
