Is Alpine doomed to stay in F1's midfield - or will the A523 break it free?

Will the real Alpine please stand up? We’ve had run-ins with the Enstone squad before regarding its launch etiquette, particularly in 2020 when it (as Renault) held a season launch and offered just six close-up images of indeterminate bits of car.

Admittedly, the reasoning was on the money – they didn’t want to invite no-name tech-focused writers (whomever they may be...) to over-analyse a purely launch-spec version of the RS20 it was due to reveal. This writer, who admittedly spent the entirety of 2019’s launch season painfully over-analysing everything in their first year on the job, took the hint – but one still had to file a feature. It got a bit sarcastic, truth be told.

Here we are, three years later. Alpine has launched one “A523”, which looks suspiciously like last year’s car, and another pink “A523” that looks suspiciously like the F1 show car. It doesn’t take Miss Marple to work out that both cars were imposters, but while one wore a blue suit and black hat to try and blend in, the other turned out in a clown costume.

Thankfully, the team did the dutiful job of unveiling the cars with a series of renders of the A523; as a depiction of this year’s machine, they’re very plausible. The nose, for example, is flatter and blends into the mainplane – unlike last year’s car, where the tip protruded slightly from the three pink wing elements. The sidepods also take the Ferrari/Red Bull hybrid design a step further, widening the channels and funnelling air to the top of the diffuser.

Like last year, the two big cooling tunnels – painted black for clarity – also feature, and are wielded over the car’s shoulders like two bazookas mounted akimbo on the world’s most unlikely battletank. There’s a few other little details, like the nose being raised to allow for a Ligier JS37-esque anhedral mounting to the wing mainplane. The rear wing also features a diagonal dip, while the rear suspension now shows the pushrod design – reconfigured over the off-season to improve airflow in that area, reduce weight and improve access to mechanics.

And that’s great, except the renders are not quite the full picture either. That’s probably a given, given the decision of then-Renault boss Cyril Abiteboul to only show the handful of ‘glimpses’ of RS20 back in 2020. Usually, however, you don’t know; you can look at the renders back-to-back with the previous car and ascertain if it’s a new model or a reliveried, older design. It's a rarity to scour through the launch renders, remark upon the differences to the old car, but point out the objects missing in a series of leaked images floating around social media...

Alpine presented two cars in differing liveries at its A523 launch on Thursday - but neither tallied with images from the new car's Silverstone shakedown

Photo by: Alpine

Those images, with photographer Dylan McCurdie’s watermark writ large across a running Alpine A523 at Silverstone, offer a handful of differences to those renders. The nose is indeed flatter than the 2022 car’s formulation, but doesn’t feature that Ligier-esque lift to the tip – it's a lot more like Aston Martin’s design from last year, with a more gradual rise in the mainplane to the snout.

The sidepods are also marginally more refined, with the Red Bull-style dip part-way along the ridge to further promote the direction of airflow downwards across the face. In front of that, a quartet of fins supplant the single turning vane aft of the mirrors shown on the renders. The bazooka outlets and the trapezoidal air intake remain on board, but the engine cover on the leaked photographs shows a clutch of further outlets at the back, in place of the little shark fin in the officially released images.

It appears that the bodywork around this area is interchangeable, and if the conditions are such that a shark fin would be preferable than the extra outlets, it looks as though the A523 can facilitate for this. Perhaps the indignance over the content of the official launch images is misplaced, and that all of these parts could simply be of different specifications to show the full gamut of the 2023 challenger and its bodywork. Unfortunately, cynicism prevails.

On a standard weekend, one Alpine driver would probably be guaranteed a seventh or eighth-place finish; behind Red Bull, Ferrari, and Mercedes, that’s not a bad level to operate at on paper. But the team has operated there for some time

While the new Alpine may be very similar in aerodynamic design ethos to its predecessor, which wouldn’t be such a bad thing given it could be very quick on its day, there was one key issue that Otmar Szafnauer's team needs to resolve going into 2023: reliability.

PLUS: How Alpine's no-nonsense boss is leading its ascent towards F1 success

The overall lack of reliability displayed by last year’s car was partly down to the Renault engine department in Viry-Chatillon pushing the boat out on a new, more aggressive package that repositioned the turbocharger and the energy recovery systems. It proved to have the requisite grunt, terrifying the other outfits with its top speed at Baku, but F1’s development is often done in public. Thus, the Renault powertrain was probably the most frequent proponent of giving up the ghost while on track. It’s that which probably drove Fernando Alonso into the arms of Aston Martin for this year.

Although powertrains have been frozen until the end of 2025, teams can make modifications for reliability reasons – which should allow Alpine and Renault to sleep a little easier in the new season. Without points being lost due to power unit failures, Alpine should have had a much easier time of beating McLaren to fourth in the championship – and a more reliable engine should ensure the lower-hanging fruit can be picked by Esteban Ocon and new team-mate Pierre Gasly.

The benefits are twofold; when a team knows its engine is unreliable, they’ll often turn it down to try and relieve the stresses place upon it. If Viry’s piston-botherers can guarantee that reliability, then Alpine can run its engine at a higher level and potentially enjoy further benefits in performance. The team identified the water pump as the key player in last year’s failures, and powertrain director Bruno Famin reckons this has now been fixed.

New arrival Gasly and compatriot Ocon will hope Alpine has made the promised step forward on reliability this year

Photo by: Alpine

The Anglo-French team admittedly enjoyed more consistency in 2022, but not at the performance level needed to make the next step. On a standard weekend, one Alpine driver would probably be guaranteed a seventh or eighth-place finish; behind Red Bull, Ferrari, and Mercedes, that’s not a bad level to operate at on paper. But the team has operated there for some time, and its fourth-placed finish in 2022’s standings could be viewed more as a result of McLaren’s struggles with its MCL36, rather than tangible gains at Alpine.

PLUS: How Alpine won the war to be F1's best of the rest in 2022

What is the real Alpine? What does Alpine aspire to be? Under the team’s former guises as Benetton and Renault, there was a certain lustre in the ranks; Benetton had a maverick approach, some of the world’s best engineers in Ross Brawn and Rory Byrne, and a star in Michael Schumacher. Renault, in its 2005-06 pomp, had Alonso at his peak and another clutch of great engineers – including Pat Symonds, James Allison and the late Dino Toso.

Maybe the team has those brilliantly bright engineers in the ranks today, and simply haven’t had the chance to show their capabilities. One suspects the Ocon-Gasly axis might not be at the level of a young Schumacher or young Alonso – and one driver who might have been was able to make an escape from the team’s clutches.

You never quite know if the real Alpine has stood up yet. It might dazzle in testing, it might disappoint, but past form suggests they’ll be frequent fixtures in the lower half of the points, maybe even capable of snatching a podium or two if the field is closer than last year. Here’s hoping we’re wrong.

Can Alpine make the step closer to third that it desires in 2023?

Photo by: Alpine