Otmar Szafnauer downplays impact of Alpine CEO's criticisms

Currently 6th in the F1 Championship - equal in points with McLaren and far from the top teams - Alpine finds itself in a familiar position to start 2023.

The French outfit is still firmly in the midfield, with the A523 only showing glimpses of the necessary pace to fight with the front-runners.

Australia, for example, was an encouraging round for Alpine. Gasly spent much of his afternoon at Albert Park within DRS range of Carlos Sainz and was on course to secure vital points before a late incident with his teammate.

Whilst Gasly's mistake and collision with Ocon meant that Alpine left Australia empty-handed, team principal Otmar Szafnauer insists that the team showed its potential.

Even after a disastrous weekend in Baku, Szafnauer maintained his belief in the A523's ability to challenge the front teams.

The Miami GP was indeed a more encouraging event for Alpine, as Ocon and Gasly both converted a double-Q3 appearance into crucial points.

Pierre Gasly kept within a few seconds of Carlos Sainz and Fernando Alonso in the opening stint, seemingly on course to secure the French outfit's best results of the year.

Esteban Ocon also had an impressive stint in Miami, extending his stint on the hard tyres and maintaining strong pace throughout.

However, the distance between the Alpine duo and the front-runners was still significant.

Ferrari's Charles Leclerc and Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton only finished a few seconds ahead of Gasly and Ocon, which might seem positive at face value.

However, considering that Leclerc spent much of his race battling with Kevin Magnussen (in addition to Hamilton starting the race from P13), Alpine still has plenty of work to do.

Fernando Alonso took the chequered flag just under 30 seconds ahead of the lead A523,  whilst George Russell was 22 seconds further up the road.

The key is that Alpine needs to find more lap time if they are to establish themselves as contenders in F1.

Alpine CEO Laurent Rossi has spoken quite harshly about his team's performance to start the year, criticising the "amateurish" mistakes made early on.

Despite these concerns, Otmar Szafnauer does not believe these comments increase the pressure on the Enstone team to perform:

"Reading something like that in the paper does not put more pressure on [the team]," f1.com quotes him as saying.

"Everyone wants to do well here. They're very well-experienced technicians and engineers at the highest level - we put pressure on ourselves.

"We just have to fix it."