First Images: Alpine Launches 'Completely New’ A524 for 2024 F1 season

• Alpine has completely redesigned its chassis.

• Also new for 2024 is a new rear suspension system, new heat rejection system, and has also undertaken extensive work on its brake system.

• Alpine, under technical director Matt Harman, has adopted a different design philosophy in a bid to move up the grid.

Alpine presented its “completely new” A524, the car it will race in Formula 1 this year, at its motorsport headquarters at Enstone, U.K., on Wednesday.

Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly remain as Alpine’s driver lineup for another season. It will be Ocon’s fifth year with the squad, and Gasly’s second, and both are out of contract at the end of the season.

Jack Doohan, third in last year’s Formula 2 championship, stays on as Alpine’s test and reserve driver.

The A524 has taken on a largely black livery for 2024—an evolution of past schemes—and it will adopt a slightly different black-and-pink scheme for eight of this year’s 24 Grands Prix.

A year ago Alpine targeted being a ‘better fourth’— the position the F1 Constructors' Championship it accomplished in 2022—and to move closer to Formula 1’s top three. Instead it slipped to a dispiriting sixth, and scored only 120 points, its worst return since 2019.

“We need to continue to improve the team to take it to the next level,” said Bruno Famin, now installed as team principal on a permanent basis, having held the role on an interim level following Otmar Szafnauer’s mid-2023 departure. “We all know that progress is never linear. That's why we will not declare any numerical targets. We are focusing on ourselves and the improvement across the many different areas, to enable us to demonstrate greater competitiveness.

“It’s going to be a fierce battle on-track, and off it in the development race in the factories, and we intend to be part of that close competition.”

Alpine—and beforehand under its Renault guise—was well-placed to benefit from the cost cap and new regulations but instead its progress stalled, while the optics of that stagnation were accentuated by the leaps made by McLaren and Aston Martin.

Alpine, under technical director Matt Harman, has adopted a different design philosophy in a bid to move up the grid.

“We maxed out the potential on the A523 and so the A524 is completely new from front to back,” said Harman.

“We rigorously analyzed the key aerodynamic concepts that we wanted to move towards on this car to explore more aerodynamic freedom and better unlock these concepts to their full potential.

“We found with the A523 that it was operating within a very narrow window. This was a weakness as it meant we were limited on what we could exploit with the car and there were very specific characteristics on where it thrived and where it did not. Therefore, for the A524, we aim to broaden this window as much as we can to give ourselves a better opportunity of maximizing its potential.”

Alpine has completely redesigned its chassis, along with a new rear suspension system, new heat rejection system, and has also undertaken extensive work on its brake system.

“Of course, the floor is a big performance differentiator on these cars and we have opted an aggressive approach on development in that area to cover a lot of different concepts and really express ourselves,” added Harman.

“We have also changed the front wing and nose to manage airflow at the front of the car. By applying these changes, we are giving ourselves much wider scope to add performance across the next two seasons even if there has been some compromise on reaching certain targets, which we have pushed to the limit. We must keep pushing this dynamic development across all areas of the team.

“The A524 approach has been aggressive but deliberate in the fact we are creating a wider scope to add performance to the car.”

Alpine’s A524 will make its on-track debut in Bahrain during a shakedown on February 20, ahead of pre-season testing at the venue from February 21 to 23.

Formula 1’s launch season continues with the rebranded RB—formerly AlphaTauri—Thursday night in Las Vegas.