The Alpine F1 Team have offered a first look at their 2024 challenger – the A524 – which will sport a pink, black and blue livery. The team also presented a second ‘pink’ livery that will be used at eight different races this season.
Alpine’s 2024 car features a stripped-back presence of the iconic pink and blue colours, with the team instead opting to place more carbon fibre on show. There is, however, a heavy presence of BWT logos.
The French team endured a mixed 2023 campaign, ending the year sixth in the Constructors’ Championship standings. With an end-of-season points haul of 120, Alpine were never in the battle for P4 and P5 with McLaren and Aston Martin but finished comfortably ahead of Williams in P7.
Both Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon achieved podium finishes and demonstrated consistent performance levels, but the French duo were limited by their machinery as they finished P11 and P12 respectively in the Drivers’ Championship standings.
The Enstone-based outfit are hoping that their 2024 challenger will bring a return to the forefront of the midfield battle as both Gasly and Ocon enter the final year of their existing contracts.
Ocon has been clear on the improvements he wants. Asked by RacingNews365 what improvements the team need to make, he replied: “When people ask me that, [I find it] quite funny because it’s never one thing in Formula One. It’s always a lot of details, a lot of different departments that are just lacking a little bit of something that’s showing up in the pace of the car.
“That’s what we need to be stronger at, it’s a little bit everywhere. I would say we are not the best straight line or not the best in corners or managing our tyres. It’s a little bit of everything. So we need to keep working hard and hopefully, we’ll find some good performance.”
Thankfully for Ocon and his team-mate, Alpine have opted for radical changes over the winter. Speaking at the launch, technical director Matt Harman revealed: “The A524 approach has been aggressive but deliberate in the fact we are creating a wider scope to add performance to the car
“We have really focused on learning and reacting to what we have learnt rather than on results. The project has been bold where we have focused on realising concepts, which we aim to add to the car. We’ve built ourselves a strong platform to add performance when we can and we have set ourselves targets to deliver those.
“We have pushed some elements to the limit and, in some cases, beyond that. That is all in line with our approach and exactly what we have set out to achieve in progressing this project to the best possible level.”
