Mercedes, Ferrari and Aston Martin are evenly matched in the first three races in 2023. They take turns leading and catching up with Red Bull in qualifying and the race. The three teams are clearly ahead of the other teams.

Alpine has generally looked to be at the front of the pack of late, although Team Enstone was badly damaged by a collision that resulted in the retirement of Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly in Australia.

Nonetheless, speaking to the F1 Nation podcast, Szafnauer said the race in Melbourne showed the team was making good progress.

“I’m happy with certain components,” Szafnauer said when asked to sum up the season.

“We’ve now analyzed our relative competitiveness and we’ve made progress with Ferrari and Mercedes so far.

“We’ve lost to Red Bull and the team we’re racing to get the most out of, or hopefully we’ll be racing against is Aston Martin. So we’ve done well in the winter. It could have been better, but we still Not optimized.

“We had a decent race in Australia and didn’t run to fifth until the end…then the red flag, we got together and we lost a lot of points. So the good news is the competitiveness of the last race looked It looks better, the bad news is we got zero points.

“The most important thing for me is competitiveness. As long as we have a competitive car, the points will come.”

Szafnauer stressed that the team must win the developmental race that defines the season.

“We’re not where we want to be,” he said. “So we have to outperform our competitors. Our development curve has to be a little bit steeper than the others so we can make up those three, four tenths of a second that we are behind.

Pierre Gasly still needs some time to enter the new environment

Photography: Alpine

“I know other people have said that. I’ve seen Mercedes say something similar. In order for them to catch up to Red Bull, they have to be on a steeper curve.

“So that’s what we’re all trying to do. Somebody’s going to get it done. I just hope it’s us. We’re trying to make sure it’s yes us. “

Szafnauer made it clear that Alpine believes that if it can close the gap to the leading group, it will actually throw itself into the battle to catch leaders Red Bull.

“For me, if you’re fighting for fourth this year, you’re fighting for second,” he said. “It was that close. So we had to get up there and be able to compete with Mercedes, Aston and Ferrari. I think that trio was really fighting for second.

“If we can get ourselves like I said, three tenths, four tenths faster than everybody else, then we’re going to be in that fight too. That has to be and still is our goal as we sit here today, we Just three games down and 20 games to go.”

Szafnauer also pointed out that newcomer Pierre Gasly has adapted well, but stressed that the Frenchman has more to offer.

“He’s really close, but I think there will be marginal gains,” he said. “It’s not that he doesn’t like racing, but in F1 you have to do everything well. It can’t be done in three races.

“You spend your entire career at Red Bull, AlphaTauri or Toro Rosso, in that environment, and then you move to a different environment.

“Yes, we are all in F1, we all have similar goals, to win races. We all have cars that meet the technical regulations, we follow the sporting and financial regulations.

“However, there are a lot of differences that will take time to get used to 100%. So Pierre has more to say.”