Alan Permane, Alpine Formula 1 sporting director, claims that Aston Martin “caught everyone by surprise.”
In recent years, the Silverstone and Enstone teams remained the primary competitors. Otmar Szafnauer moved to Alpine as team principal while Alonso moved across the board to Aston Martin.
In first two races of this season, Aston Martin has beaten the Alpine so far. Alonso secured podium on third place while Alpine could not finish higher than eighth.
Permane admits that A523 is not performing as expected. Nonetheless, the team has taken a step closer to competing, Mercedes and Ferrari, than last year.
“It’s not satisfying that we’re not where we want to be in terms of pace,” he said. “We want to be a bit quicker than that, up fighting those guys.
“I think we are closer to Ferrari and closer to Merc than were last year. I haven’t really had a good analysis of it yet, but I’m sure we’re closer to Ferrari, because at this time last year, they were fighting for wins.
“Obviously, Aston have made a huge leap, and we’re fifth quickest team, which is not where we want to be.
“Our target was to be closer to third place. That isn’t the case at the moment. Actually, it may be, because if you say Mercedes is the third quickest team, maybe we’re closer to them than we were last year.
“But it’s not good enough. It’s not where we want to be, and I think Aston have caught everyone by surprise by the jump they’ve made.”
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Permane admitted that Red Bull is overwhelming ahead of other team’s this year.
“It does look like no one’s getting close to Red Bull this year, they look like they’ve got a second a lap in hand honestly,” he said.
“It’s frustrating. We just need to keep working hard and bringing the upgrades and putting the downforce on. Keeping on keeping on, and that worked very well for us last year.
“We brought a lot of stuff last year, we’ve got good correlation. So we can be very confident that parts and upgrades we bring will work the car, we just need to improve it at a faster rate than the others do.”
Asked where A523 car is lacking he said: “I suspect it’s a little bit everywhere. The drivers want a little bit of an improvement in braking, they want some better traction.
“There’s not one real area where they’re really complaining about. We need to improve everywhere, I’m sure.”
