F1 | Alpine in China without news. Big updates in the medium term

The A524 is slow. And this is a fact. The main problem, however, is that – often – it is the slowest of the lot, at least in the first 4 races of the 2024 Formula 1 season. Alpine ended up taking a good fourth place in the Constructors' World Championship in 2022, the first year with ground effect single-seaters.

Last year, thanks to the return of McLaren and the exploits of Aston Martin, Alpine finished in sixth place, losing two positions without however disfiguring too much. Yet the owners decided to reorganize the team's top management, thinking they could create a strong team and have the opportunity to return to the top ranks.

This year the situation has worsened further. An ambitious single-seater, redesigned from scratch, turned out even worse than last year's. This led Matt Harman – technical director – and head of aerodynamics Dirk de Beer to resign just over a month ago.

In the time between the resignations of the two technicians and the last race, Alpine confirmed itself as being at the bottom of today's Formula 1. The A524 has always remained the same, the slowest or almost the slowest, needing and eager for innovation to leave that place that hurts the French company. And they won't arrive at the Chinese Grand Prix.

“We will have no updates for the Chinese Grand Prix,” Pierre Gasly said after the Japanese Grand Prix. “There are things we are working on and they need more time to be ready. We will see where we are exactly in the next race, but updates will certainly come in the closer races.”

The Frenchman continued by stating that the A524 will need significant innovations to abandon the role of the disappointing team of the season and try to replicate the good things done by McLaren in the great recovery achieved in the middle of last season.

“In the medium term we need major updates. For the moment we have to improve with what we have, because this car concept is not delivering what we expected. But at the same time, everything we will be able to do every single weekend will help us will potentially bring us closer to the finish line.”

“So yes, at the moment we are clearly at the bottom of the second half of the group. But every single tenth that we manage to get as soon as possible will make a difference at the end of the year,” concluded the Frenchman.