Alpine has become the final team to host its launch ahead of the 2023 Formula 1 season, revealing its A523 car at an event in London.
The event provided the first official look at the car, but the works Renault team released one shadowy image of it from its shakedown and leaked photos also appeared online after this.
The A523 appears visually similar to the team’s 2022 car, but sports a new front wing design and a nose cone with a flatter upper section.
It also features more bulbous rear bodywork around its engine cover – made more identifiable by the use of black paint in this region.
One of Alpine’s aims was to remodel the cooling system to save weight. This design would appear to tally with that.
Two versions of the car livery were revealed, including a mostly pink variant prioritising the colours of title sponsor BWT which will be used at the first three grands prix.
The A523 made its track debut on Monday, with Alpine describing its shakedown run at Silverstone as one “without any issues”.
Its 100km running at the British Grand Prix venue was split between Esteban Ocon and the team’s new signing Pierre Gasly.
Alpine finished fourth in the F1 constructors’ championship last year and has set itself the target of defending that position in what this year could be an extremely competitive midfield while also getting closer to F1’s ‘big three’ teams – Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes.
It also has a 100-race plan to win a grand prix in place that started in 2022.
Team principal Otmar Szafnauer said last summer that Alpine was intending to recruit 75 more staff – taking its total headcount above 900 – in its bid to match F1’s biggest teams.
Its most recent effort to defend fourth place, which it previously achieved in 2018, was followed by three consecutive fifth-place finishes in the constructors’ championship, including in 2020 when it beat Ferrari but finished behind McLaren and Racing Point (now Aston Martin).
Though Alpine was the final team to hold a season launch, it is not the last to have publicly shown its 2023 car.
Red Bull’s season launch, which it tied in with news of an F1 engine partnership with Ford from 2026, included the ‘reveal’ of an RB19 that appeared to be an RB18 and which team principal Christian Horner later admitted was not “a total reflection of what will hit the track in a few weeks’ time”.
It has since run its 2023 car at Silverstone, but has only officially revealed a brief, distant video clip of the RB19 from that shakedown.
