In addition to finding itself in an extremely difficult moment from a performance point of view, Alpine must deal with the rider market in view of 2025 and 2026, the year in which the new technical regulation will be introduced.
Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly, the drivers currently under contract with the French team based in Enstone, have their contracts expiring at the end of this season and the team will have to try to understand what to do: renew both, just one of the two or find themselves 2 new drivers for the transition year 2025 and the first of the new single-seaters.
Bruno Famin, team principal of Alpine after the farewell of Otmar Szafnauer, declared that he is very happy with his pilots, excellent in navigating the stormy sea in which the team finds itself without letting themselves be beaten down by the waves of difficulty which, instead, have overwhelmed the team from a performance point of view.
“We are happy with our drivers, and our drivers are happy with us. We are talking to them about renewal regularly. Let's see what we can do in the future. There are ups and downs, now we are at a very low moment, but we have a project very strong and with a long-term vision.”
“We have a solid basis for the 2026 project, we are a manufacturer, we are developing the power unit and we are working to optimize every detail. We have a project that makes it unnecessary to convince Esteban and Pierre to stay.”
Although Ocon and Gasly currently represent Alpine's first choices, the team still considers itself sufficiently covered if one of the two decides to undertake new professional challenges thanks to its academy, with the presence of interesting pilots such as Jack Doohan, today reserve of the F1 team, and Victor Martins who races in FIA F2.
“We are definitely testing the market and we also have our own academy where we are developing talent for our tomorrow. We have Jack Doohan who is our reserve, we have Victor Martins in FIA F2. We have a wide range of possibilities. We are happy with Esteban and we are happy with Pierre, but we are ready to react if something happens.”
“We are in no hurry to announce our drivers. We have other problems to solve, other things to improve and we are not in a hurry. We are ready, we are prepared, but we are not in a race.”
“I would like to use this opportunity to thank our drivers, because we are in a difficult position. It is not the start to the season that we would have liked, but we appreciate how constructive they are with the team, not only in terms of communicating with journalists, but even within the team itself we try to find solutions with the car, they are both really good at making themselves useful.”
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