Alpine has unveiled the A524 2024 F1 car marking a fresh start for Renault’s underperforming works program.
Alpine unveiled their 2024 F1 contender which Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly will race, at their Enstone headquarters on Wednesday.
The event served as a call to action for Alpine, which fell from fourth to sixth in the 2023 season and is determined to make it back as one of the leading teams in the midfield.
Alpine’s Hypercar entry for the World Endurance Championship was also unveiled during the French team’s launch.
Alpine took a different approach when revealing their new livery for the season at their Enstone base for the upcoming year, largely leaning on black for both the standard and BWT-inspired liveries, after teasing several close-up shots of a pink camouflage livery in the days preceding their official reveal.
But in contrast to past seasons, when blue dominated the majority of races, Alpine is scheduled to sport the pink livery for eight Grands Prix in order to curry favor with its title sponsor BWT.
However, the audacity extends beyond the fresh livery. To keep up with rivals including Aston Martin and McLaren, who made significant progress in 2023, Alpine highlights a fundamental shift in the paradigm of car design.
This strategy to break the deadlock highlights the team’s desire to rekindle its competitiveness and contend for podium finishes once more.
“It’s a great moment for Alpine Motorsports to come together and officially present its programmes for the 2024 season,” Bruno Famin said at the launch event.
“It is certainly a unique moment to have both the A524 Formula 1 car and A424 Hypercar along with all the drivers in the same room as both projects prepare for what will undoubtedly be a busy and intense 2024 year.
“To see both the real cars here today is testament to all the hard work conducted behind the scenes at our factories from our thousands of talented employees in the United Kingdom and in France.
“The next stage on our journey is deploying everything to the track, applying operational excellence across the board and growing a greater dynamic and mindset from all our teams.
“We are all very much looking forward to continuing the hard work to bring the Alpine name success.”
Alpine’s 2023 challenger was inconsistent and only sporadically presented an obstacle to the leading F1 teams due to car limits and an engine deficit. This led to major management changes during the year, with the replacement of Alpine’s CEO, team principal and long-serving sporting director.
Alpine is now calling for the A524 to be a fortune changer under the leadership of Bruno Famin, who was appointed team principal on a permanent basis after serving in that capacity temporarily last year.
The team claims that its A524 is an entirely novel concept developed for the next two seasons, distinguished by ingenious modifications derived from data collected from predecessors.
An improved undercut and a slimmer sidepod indicate considerable cooling relocation, especially when combined with a little larger airbox.
Technical director Matt Harman mentions the new car has modified brake thermal management, a new rear suspension, an optimized front suspension, a new heat rejection system, and a “completely redesigned” chassis as some of the major changes.
Out of all of those, the new rear suspension with a repositioned pushrod is the largest and prominently clear change.
The goal is to enhance entry rotation and through-corner balance, which are two of the 2023 Alpine’s primary weaknesses—a poor ride and poor sense of balance.
“The A524 approach has been aggressive but deliberate in the fact we are creating a wider scope to add performance to the car,” said Harman. “We have really focused on learning and reacting to what we have learnt rather than on results.
“The project has been bold where we have focused on realising concepts, which we aim to add to the car.
“We’ve built ourselves a strong platform to add performance when we can and we have set ourselves targets to deliver those.”
