Alpine pins hope on former Ferrari engineer Sanchez

Following a tough start to their 2024 F1 season, Alpine team boss Bruno Famin has taken delight in the improvements the Anglo-French outfit has achieved in recent races.

Alpine has started the 2024 F1 heavily off the pace. It emerged at the start of the season that the team's A524 was overweight which hindered the team's competitiveness in the opening races.

However, the team managed to bring several key upgrades forward which helped Alpine to close in on the leading midfield teams. Last Sunday's Monaco Grand Prix saw Pierre Gasly make his first Q3 appearance in 2024 which the Frenchman could convert into his first point-scoring finish this year.

Assessing his team's performance in recent races, team boss Bruno Famin added: "Where I'm satisfied is with the reaction of the team, because the car is what everybody knows at the start of the season, but we have been able to bring earlier than planned upgrades to come back to the minimum weight.

"And that was very good. Now we need to switch to the… And this is what we are doing, to switch to the second phase of the development of that car. You know that we have worked quite a lot in understanding why we were in such situation.

Alpine has recently signed David Sanchez, who left Ferrari last year to join McLaren. However, the Frenchman suddenly departed from the Woking-based outfit, and did not hesitate long to commit himself to a new role at Alpine.

"And having with us now since two weeks David Sanchez on board will help us to go faster in the recovery, which is what we hope. But for the time being, it's a bit too early to talk about when we will be able to bring the next significant upgrade," said Famin.

Last weekend's Monaco round saw the two Alpine drivers Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly collide at the entry to the tunnel, with the former acknowledging his mistake.

However, Famin was clearly far from impressed about what happened, and he vented his anger from the pit wall as Canal+ interviewed him live.

"This kind of incident is sad, it's exactly what we didn't want to see. Esteban's dive was completely out of place, it was exactly what we didn't want to see, and there will be the appropriate consequences."

Famin also said that the team will "take drastic action" after the incident, but it is remains to be seen how Alpine will respond to the crash between its drivers.