Alpine chief technical officer Pat Fry says the team’s first major upgrade of the year at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix should be a “reasonable step”.
Off the back of a fourth place finish in last season’s constructors’ championship, Alpine came into 2023 with the objective of closing the gap to the top three teams.
But while it has started the year at the head of the midfield, Alpine has dropped further down the pecking order with Aston Martin leapfrogging it after making huge gains over the winter.
The Enstone-based outfit has acknowledged it needs to begin making strides with its in-season development and is planning to introduce its first significant car updates for Baku.
“As last year, we’ve got a reasonable upgrade plan running,” said Fry, as quoted by The Race.
“We should have a reasonable step for Baku and then more coming through, so at race four and race six [Imola] there should be some reasonable steps coming.”
Leading up to the opening race of the season in Bahrain, Alpine team principal Otmar Szafnauer felt it would have to out-develop its rivals to achieve its ambition of becoming an established front-running team.
But Alpine has so far been unable to convert the pace of the A523 into results, with its late double retirement in Australia – when its drivers Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon collided – costing it a handful of points.
Fry estimates Alpine will need to find around four-to-five tenths if it is to join the close fight behind runaway leaders Red Bull.
Asked if he was happy with Alpine’s performance level, Fry said: “Personally, I’m never satisfied. We’re here to be moving forward and we need to keep on working.
“It’s good to see what’s coming out the factory from the windtunnel and some of the other developments we’ve got going on. We’re on average, four or five tenths [off] in qualifying that we need to find, not to catch Red Bull but to catch the others, which is all within our grasp. We’ve just got outdevelop to them.”
