First Images: Alpine F1 Team Rolls out A523 in London

• The Alpine A523 was shaken down for the first time at Silverstone on Monday.

• Alpine F1 team for 2023 feature a new driver pairing Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly.

• Alpine’s unveiling means all 10 teams have now presented their 2023 cars ahead of the start of preseason testing in Bahrain next Thursday.

Alpine has become the final Formula 1 team to present its 2023 challenger, the A523, during a launch ceremony at London’s Printworks on Thursday.

Alpine finished fourth in last year’s Constructors’ Championship after prevailing in a season-long fight against McLaren.

The A523 was shaken down for the first time at Silverstone on Monday with new driver pairing Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly sharing duties. Childhood friends Ocon and Gasly fell out, grew up and reached Formula 1, and have now been thrown together at Alpine.

That came after Alpine initially expected to retain Fernando Alonso, who instead jumped ship for Aston Martin, before anticipated Alonso replacement Oscar Piastri signed for McLaren.

Alpine instead recruited Gasly from Red Bull’s sister team, AlphaTauri, marking a fresh start for the Frenchman.

The parallels between Ocon and Gasly are startling, beyond merely their nationality and shared experiences growing up on a kart track near the French city of Rouen. Both successfully climbed motorsport’s junior ladder in spite of at-times perilous finances, a predicament that afflicted Ocon more than Gasly, while in Formula 1 they had to overcome potentially career-defining setbacks.

Ocon was a victim of circumstance in 2018, losing his seat and spending 2019 as Mercedes’ reserve driver, while Gasly had to rebuild his reputation at Toro Rosso/AlphaTauri after a chastening half-year at Red Bull.

Even their sole victories to date were achieved in similar circumstances, landing in an unexpected lead (for Gasly read a well-timed Safety Car/red flag at Monza in 2020, and Ocon a start crash that eliminated most front-runners at Budapest in 2021), before resisting race-long pressure from behind to seal a shock triumph.

Ocon enters 2023 with 111 starts under his belt, Gasly on 108.

The relationship between the Frenchmen in recent years has been cordial, having deteriorated during their childhood—an aspect believed to extend to their respective families, too—with the roots of the fracture rarely discussed.

The Ocon-Gasly dynamic will therefore be a fascinating subplot but it will remain just a footnote unless Alpine can actually deliver tangible gains.

Alpine has been entrenched in Formula 1’s midfield for several years, never threatening to get close to a championship, but never regressing towards mediocrity. It has classified fourth, fifth, fifth, fifth and fourth across the past five years. Its points tally across the past three years has been 181, 155 and 173.

Through the pandemic, during which Group Renault re-committed to its Formula 1 project after some wavering, stability was the name of the game but now the excuses for midfield stagnation are dimming. Alpine has the advantage of not being a customer team, and it took aggressive risks last year to improve engine performance, while the cost cap continues to eradicate the financial glass ceiling that it previously lamented.

Alpine’s unveiling means all 10 teams have now presented 2023 cars ahead of the start of preseason testing in Bahrain next Thursday.