Laurent Rossi takes out the sulphate and castigates “dilettantism” among Alpine

We hadn't heard it publicly since the zero point ofAlpine in Azerbaijan, nor even since the team's two cars had crashed out of each other in a rather embarrassing end to the race near Melbourne more than a month ago. Laurent Red waited to speak publicly... it was obviously to strike even harder and put his teams back in place. 

Present on the Miami side, the brand's boss Alpine made it clear in the Florida paddock that he was particularly angry after the sluggish start to the season for the brand with the A arrow. In an interview given to Canal+ and scheduled to be broadcast on Sunday during the grid, the Corsican did not mince his words. He simply called on his teams to take their responsibilities and… to simply get to work! 

Rossi denounces a lack of rigor at Alpine

Rossi in fact delivered a cold, sincere and quite painful analysis of the situation. “This year, ultimately, we are starting with a performance handicap on the one hand, and an execution handicap on the other., he denounced. That's a lot, and it shows. Because we are at a ranking which is not at all worthy of the resources involved, and we are quite far, very far, from the final objective of the year. Alpine is currently in 6th place in the Manufacturers' championship, with only eight points, notably behind McLaren who nevertheless admitted to having missed his car last winter. 

“What I see is that of course there is a lack of performance, a lack of rigor in execution, but potentially also a state of mind which is not up to what has been done in the past by this same team”, growled the Habs. I didn't like the first Grand Prix, because there was a lot, I'm sorry to say, of dilettantism, which led to a result that was not good, mediocre, bad.

💬 “When you make the same mistakes twice, it’s because you haven’t learned and you’re not taking responsibility.”

Laurent Rossi does not mince his words on the start of the seasonAlpine 😳#MiamiGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/qYwrutMHfw

— CANAL+ F1® (@CanalplusF1) May 6, 2023

“And then the last race in Baku looks very similar to that in Bahrain. And that is not acceptable. We have the right to make mistakes, it's a basic principle, it's from mistakes that we learn. On the other hand, we learn, and when we make the same mistakes twice, it’s because we haven’t learned and we’re not taking responsibility, and that’s not acceptable.”

Laurent Rossi is in fact referring to the difficulties experienced by his operational teams in correctly adjusting the car in Bahrain, and especially in Baku, where the two drivers were handicapped by problems with their cars during the one and only session. free trials. Somewhere, the violence of Laurent Rossi's words at least has the merit of showing thatAlpine really intends to give itself the means to achieve its objectives, and that this is not just a matter of publicity, as has too often been the case in enstone ces dernières années. 

In Azerbaijan, if the moods were obviously not happy, we were somewhat surprised to see the management of the Blues being satisfied with good correlations between the track and the factory, or even to highlight that the objective of to get close to Mercedes in pure performance had been achieved. It probably wasn't wrong, but definitely not the best time to say it. 

This Saturday, in qualifying for Miami, it seems thatAlpine pulled himself together a little, placing his two cars in Q3, including qualifying in 5th position Pierre Gasly. Is this directly or indirectly linked to the shouting pushed by Rossi internally? One thing is certain however, it is on Sunday that the points are distributed and the tricolor doublet will be particularly awaited, after two nightmarish weekends. This will be the case for operational teams too, if we understand correctly… 

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