Alpine Team Principal Oliver Oakes believes the Anglo-French Formula 1 outfit is “not very flexible” regarding the switch from 2025 to 2026 car development.
With chassis, aero, powertrain and tyre changes coming for the 2026 season, all 10 F1 teams face a difficult development conundrum: when do you cease development on your current car in favour of stealing a march on the competition next year?
Again, all 10 teams have already begun work on their cars for next year, but the sliding scale of development is tipped firmly in the direction of 2025 given the season hasn’t even started yet.
2025 is poised to be one of the tightest seasons in F1 history and that goes for the front of the pack and the midfield, a fight Alpine finds itself firmly in.
Perhaps that is why Oakes told select media including Motorsport Week during pre-season testing at the Bahrain International Circuit that Alpine is “not very flexible” on when it can put a full stop on 2025 development.
“I can’t speak for other teams, but I think everybody’s sort of juggling that, maybe even a little bit already, because just as you get this car out the door, you’re already having your sort of discussions on planning and what you’re doing,” Oakes said.
“So I think for us as a team, we’re quite lucky that we’re trying to balance both, because in the end we’re not a small team, but we’re also not one of the big teams either.
“But I think you’re going to see that, especially after the first few races, it’s pretty evident of where your attention needs to be.”
Will Alpine’s 2025 targets affect 2026 development?
Essentially, any team that is clearly falling short of its season targets after the first few races of 2025 will more than likely shut development down in favour of a full-scale assault on 2026.
For Alpine, the target is to continue where it finished 2024 strongly as the benchmark midfield runner.
“I think continuing the second part of last year and I say that a little bit hesitantly, because I think it’s so competitive in that midfield,” Oakes said of his season target.
“But I think we feel confident where we ended last year, we want to start this year on that same footing.”
Moreover, Oakes said “I think our target is to continue where we ended up at the end of last year, which is we kind of want to be clipping at the heels of those [front] teams.”
It’s a target that Alpine has had before and fallen short of, and rest assured if the team starts 2025 like it did last year, in calamitous fashion, focus on 2026 will start with haste.
But by all metrics Alpine looks to be in a good place regarding the midfield fight, and that perceived lack of flexibility Oakes mentioned could indicate an expectation of a lengthy battle with the likes of Haas and Williams to win the crown of best of the rest this year.
READ MORE – Alpine wants to ‘clip at the heels’ of leading F1 teams in 2025
