WHEN FERNANDO ALONSO speared off the road during qualifying for the Australian GP, the result of an oil pressure drop triggering a failsafe mode that shut down the car, there were mixed emotions in the Alpine garage.
On the one hand there was the usual frustration of a missed opportunity and the repair job to come. On the other there was the knowledge of just how fast Alonso had been going, and the promise that it represented. The Spaniard’s first two sector times indicated that he might even have beaten Charles Leclerc to pole, putting him right into the heart of the battle between Ferrari and Red Bull for the race.
The performance indicated that the team is making genuine progress towards its stated target of being a title contender within the remaining four years of the current engine formula, or the slightly snappier ‘one hundred races’ that those seasons will represent.
It was a huge boost for the two-pronged management team of Alpine Cars CEO Laurent Rossi and new team principal Otmar Szafnauer, who was recruited after his acrimonious departure from Aston Martin.
Like McLaren and Williams, Team Enstone has spent years in the shadow of relative newcomers Red Bull and Mercedes, trying to recapture past glories. There are still people in the camp who contributed to Michael Schumacher’s title successes with Benetton in 1994-’95, and rather more who were there for Alonso’s
