According to Alpine CEO Marcin Budkowski, the team’s progress is a “great motivation” for the 2022 championship.
At the end of the 2020 season, Alpine underwent a rebranding process, changing their name from Team Renault to Alpine. Their main aim was to battle McLaren and Ferrari for the third position in the Constructors Championship.
Alpine had a hit-or-miss season in 2021. A first-place finish by Esteban Ocon in Hungary and a podium by Fernando Alonso in Qatar gave the Enstone team the edge against Alpha Tauri to finish fifth in the constructors’ standings.
While it’s evident that Alpine still has a long way to go to catch up to Ferrari and McLaren since they were far ahead in the battle for third place in 2021. Alpine CEO Marcin Budkowski believes that their growth and the manner they worked in 2021 is a wonderful motivator for 2022.
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“Considering we’ve had the same engine practically for the last three years, the chassis and gearbox are frozen for strategic reasons to invest our resources elsewhere, we’ve done pretty well with what we had.”
“Both on the track and in terms of developing the areas we could, so it’s very motivating for next season. Now we know our numbers, but we don’t know the numbers of others,” he said.
A mega year for the whole team, ready to see what 2022 brings 🙌 pic.twitter.com/LhUuCReuqa
— Alpine F1 Team (@AlpineF1Team) December 21, 2021
Steady steps to success with the motivated workforce behind
Even if the improvements behind the scenes aren’t yet obvious on the surface, the Alpine team boss feels they’re starting to pay off by stating:
“I’m proud of the way the team works. A lot has changed in recent years and that change is starting to pay off. It does so mostly on the track, and also at the factory, although it is not yet visible because for more than two years we have focused on next year’s car.”
“But when I look at the factory and all the work that’s being done, the interactions and all the people we’ve brought in over the last few years, it looks good for next year.”
Budkowski admitted that the team’s irregularity should be fixed with his next car. Radically different technical regulations for 2022 offer the opportunity to change the entire order of the current grid.
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“I think we’ve shown this season that when the opportunities came, we were able to deliver them, and there are some races where we weren’t competitive and we didn’t really know why, so I knew we had to fix that.”
“There’s a lot of work in the background to fix it, as a lot of work is being done on the car and the whole package. It looks promising,” he concluded.
