Optimistic Alpine: Improvements could also work in Austria

The Alpine F1 team manager, Otmar Szafnauerbecame optimistic ahead of the Austrian GP this weekend after the good performance of the enhancements they introduced last week before Silverstone.

Alpine closed the gap on McLaren a little further in their battle for fourth place in the World Championship, but for Enstone it was a shame to lose Esteban Ocon in the final third of the race. After a complete examination, they concluded that an electrical fault had caused a problem with the fuel pump.

“With the result from Silverstone, we continued to close the gap on the fourth -place driver in the World Championship. Fernando was fifth in the race, but we couldn’t score points in both cars because of Esteban’s retirement. Now we know that it was an electrical fault in the fuel pump. Unfortunately, he is having a great career after recovering from the first lap incident “, explains the American-Romanian manager at the Alpine preview for the Austrian GP.

And remember the performance that Silverstone enhancements offer, where they improve their performance and they should be helped to accelerate on a circuit where maximum speed and traction are key.

“The improvements we made at Silverstone worked as expected and gave us extra performance on the track. Austria was the second sprint qualifier of the year and we had to do a good job on Friday before qualifying to have confidence. in the race. ” and get good points ”, Szafnauer explains.

Last year in two races held on the circuit owned by Red Bull Alpine, he only scored with Fernando Alonso, ninth in first – he was eighth on the grid – and tenth in second. Meanwhile, Ocón was 14th in the first and left in the second. Sixth in 2018 with Force India was the Frenchman’s best result while the Spaniard was his 5th at Ferrari in 2014 as the best result, starting in fourth.

Mixed conditions over the weekend

The weather forecast for the weekend indicates that Thursday, the day before, will be when the biggest storms will last until Friday morning and since then and throughout Saturday no more rain is expected. On Sundays there is a high probability of rain until 1 pm, but in any case it does not rain. The temperature will be low at this point in the summer, with a maximum over 20ºc.

“The weather is unpredictable at this circuit and I think we have the potential to be beautiful in Austria, whether it is in wet or dry conditions. This is our main sponsor BWT home race so we hope to be with them on the weekend and enjoy good success on the track on Sunday ”, he said.