Safnauer: We will do everything we can to close the gap

Otmar Safnauer worked for many years in a team that was formerly called Force India and changed to Aston Martin F1 after a series of transformations. It was under his leadership that the Silverstone team in 2016-2017. rose to 4th place in the Constructors’ Championship.

But now, after the first round of the season, Aston Martin is second in the team standings, while the Alpine F1, which Safnauer has been driving since last year, clearly underperformed its capabilities in Bahrain. He is ready to congratulate his former colleagues, and now rivals, on their success, but he promises that the Renault group’s factory team will still bounce back.

Otmar Szafnauer: “I congratulate them, but we want to be ahead of them and will do everything we can to close the gap. For us, the race in Bahrain was not normal, because we usually do not allow miscalculations of the operational plan, moreover, Pierre Gasly started last (he ended up earning a few points for 9th place).

I don’t think Lance Stroll was that far ahead of us, although I don’t know yet if we can beat Aston Martin in a normal race. We will analyze the causes of the problems, because now we are not yet at the level we want to be.

In fairness it should be noted that this team has always been able to work well and efficiently. Now Aston Martin is using a Mercedes wind tunnel and I don’t think it’s a negative – if it were, no one would behave like that. It really doesn’t matter if you work in your own wind tunnel or use someone else’s.

In general, I congratulate Aston Martin, but in fact this is the same team that used to be called Force India. They have made impressive progress, but we need to catch up. Let’s see how close we will be to pole positions this year and what race pace we are capable of. We also need to add every year.

When we talk about Fernando Alonso, he is an extremely goal-oriented person who lives for the sake of racing. During the Grand Prix, Fernando fought very aggressively for positions, but we have to admit that time has power over all of us, although no one knows exactly when age starts to affect.