F1 | Alpine CEO Lauren Rossi says, "It's a 100-race project" referring to Alpine Racing's path to the top of Formula One
With Alpine winning their first Formula One race earlier this year with Esteban Ocon in Hungary but have failed to do so afterwards, CEO Laurent Rossi aims to reverse that by 2024, and has put in place a 100-race project.
For this season, the Renault Group renamed its F1 business as Alpine, redesigning the livery and bringing back two-time world champion Fernando Alonso alongside Esteban Ocon.
Currently, they are sixth in the constructors' championship, with more than 100 points behind Ferrari but 19 points ahead of AlphaTauri. Besides, Ocon's victory in Hungary, they have just one other top-five result with Alonso's fourth also in Hungary.
Rossi has the board's support - including Renault CEO Luca de Meo - that Alpine will be there for the foreseeable future, as they seek to write a lengthy new chapter in F1.
According to Rossi, “We have a long-term project, the objective is to reach a level of competitiveness that places us on the podium as many times as possible in 2024,”
He continues, "From today in fifth, you can easily find a roadmap. It’s going to be every year a bit better. It’s a 100-race project, four years, four seasons. Every race we must make progress. It can be progress you see on the track or progress you don’t see, all the little details. The idea is to never stop – and be able to see we’re going in the right direction. Next year, it’ll be a coin tossing year."
He adds, "All we want is to make sure we have a satisfactory level of performance when we start, which doesn’t put us too far from the top, And then from there, we can carry on our climb to the summit.”
Alpine's long-term ambition in F1 was reaffirmed by De Meo, who stated that they are utilising it to market their electric sports vehicle, which would subsequently support the racing operations.
De Meo comments, "We are here to stay, we are here to improve every year"
He adds, "We are here with an ambition. Alpine is part of one of the biggest manufacturers of the world. The story is that Alpine will have a long-term commitment.”
He concludes, "We are planning to transform Alpine in the electric car sports arena. We’re developing the product. The idea is to build around racing activities a business that would give perennity to the racing activity, so the business would then finance the operation. It will be a system that closes itself. Our performance here [in F1] will give substance to the whole story.”
