Melbourne crash won't delay Alpine's Baku F1 upgrade

Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly made heavy contact with the wall after they touched following the final grid restart in Melbourne.

The incident caused extensive damage to both cars, but the Alpine factory started immediately replenishing its stock of spares, taking advantage of the three-week break between races.

Szafnauer admits that there was a risk that the extra work might delay the Baku upgrade but in the end, the team was able to stick to its original schedule and make sufficient examples of the new floor parts for this weekend.

He insisted that was one of the positives to be drawn from what was a nightmare race for the team.

"A lot of points were begging, and had that incident happened, say with two races left and you're in a fight for fourth or third or fifth, then it has a bigger impact," he told the F1 Nation podcast.

"But with 20 races to go, three good things came out of that race. One, although aided by DRS, we were able to stay with Ferrari of [Carlos] Sainz, and even without DRS stay ahead of the Aston with Lance [Stroll] in it. So those were the positives from that race.

"And then the other big positive was the fact that as soon as the accident happened, the entire operations here at Enstone got together. They didn't wait for a report of this is damaged, that's damaged, we have to replace these suspension members or a front wing.

"They kind of saw what happened and straight away got out to diverting some of the manufacturing resource into making further spares, but without losing the upgrade that was planned for Baku. And that is a tremendous effort by everybody here.

"So we will be going to Baku with the planned upgrade. And for probably an hour or two before everyone got together it was unsure, because you definitely have to remake spares as a priority over the upgrade.

Pierre Gasly, Alpine A523

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

"But now we're off to Baku with the planned upgrade, as well as with ample spares after the crash.

"It'll be no secret to tell everyone that we've got an upgrade on the floor, we've got an entirely new floor. That's what it is, a couple of other small little bits, but predominantly the floor."

Regarding the two crashed chassis, he said: "They were okay in the fact that they were repairable. So we didn't lose one."

Szafnauer insisted that the damage bill has not compromised the team's 2023 budget as there is an allowance for such circumstances.

"We plan in our budget cap to spend a percentage of our money for crash damage," he said.

"We look back historically, and we know what an average year looks like for crash damage and how much that costs you.

"And having a crash like that early on just means that you've expended some of that crash damage budget early.

"So at this point, it has zero impact on our plans as to what we do, the upgrades that we're bringing, so as of now, no consequence whatsoever."

Szafnauer says that the team has accepted that it was a racing incident, noting that both Ocon and Gasly initially thought that they were to blame.

"They're both a bit contrite," he said. "Both of them at the beginning thought maybe that's my fault, maybe that's my fault. So when that happens, when you have 50-50, then you kind of know that they didn't see it coming.

"Both of them were, 'Had I not gone off, this wouldn't have happened, had I not tried to go by him this wouldn't have happened.' So it was like 50-50."

Regarding the team's viewpoint on the clash, he said: "We just had to logically and carefully review what happened and see where things could have been done better to be able to avoid it.

"But it was a racing incident."