Alpine ‘confident’ issue that annoyed Alonso is fixed for F1 2023

The Anglo-French outfit suffered seven DNFs last season, with the team’s poor reliability proving to be a major frustration for Fernando Alonso, who regularly lamented points lost through no fault of his own. 

Alpine have been working hard over the winter to address the problem, which engine chief Bruno Famin put down to a issue with the water pump. 

After revamping the water pump and changing its location for 2023, Alpine are sure they have a fix, which would be good news for Esteban Ocon and new teammate Pierre Gasly. 

“Our main problem last year was the water pump,” Famin told media including Crash.net at the launch of Alpine’s A523 car. 

“The major part of our reliability issue in 2022 was due to the water pump. Unfortunately, due to the location of the water pump, it was problematic. 

“We changed it for 2023 and to change it we had to make some modifications on the pump itself and a new location on the car. 

“That’s why it was not possible to change it during the season last year. Very quickly we saw that, that the problem would be almost impossible to solve during the season. 

“We tried to improve and reduce the risk of failure, but we infact decided to work on the new car. So we changed the water pump and we changed the location of the water pump.” 

Asked by Crash.net how confident he is that the issue is now solved, Famin replied: “I am as confident as it is as possible to be before the first race. 

“All the dyno tests are okay. We made some endurance tests with no problem. But the dyno is the dyno and the track is the track. So let’s see on the track. 

“But we are as confident as we can be.” 

Famin stressed the changes will not have any impact on performance "one way or another".