F1 | Alpine, Szafnauer: “The FIA ​​should remove major investments from the budget cap”

Alpine is undoubtedly among the teams that have started the new season on a high note. The French team, which placed Pierre Gasly alongside the confirmed Esteban Ocon with the latter taking the place of Fernando Alonso who moved to Aston Martin, has scraped together a paltry fourteen points in the first five events held so far in the World Championship. A certainly negative trend with the team principal Otmar Szafnauer who underlined how the French team is pushing hard to increase their performances.

Among the difficulties that are accompanying the Enstone team so far are not problems related to liquidity, but the FIA ​​rules related to the budget cap which prevent the teams from being able to spend large quantities to improve the infrastructure.

“The others have better simulation tools than us,” Szafnauer told Auto Motor und Sport. “We usually need a little more time on the track until we find the perfect setup. Our current simulator is 15-20 years old. It's an older model McLaren. We ordered a new simulator a month ago, but we will only have it in one and a half or two years."

One problem, raised by Szafnauer, is that concerning the budget cap which does not allow various teams to catch up with the top teams: "We need to talk to the FIA ​​so that the necessary investments do not fall within the spending cap. Otherwise you are trapped in the existing infrastructure. We need to build a new testbed for 2026. Some projects are expected to be outside the budget cap, such as the Aston Martin wind tunnel, for which an exception has been made. If it had been within budget it would never have been built."

Szafnauer also admitted that Alpine needs to recruit new professionals from competing teams: “But this takes time. People who can help the team and make a difference usually have long-term contracts. Aston brought a lot of people from Red Bull and Mercedes, not just Dan Fallows and Eric Blandin, who everyone is talking about at the moment."