Ahead of the weekend in Miami, Alpine F1 boss Otmar Szafnauer was optimistic about the upcoming event…
Q: How interesting is the first race in Miami for Formula 1?
Otmar Safnauer: It’s fantastic that Formula 1 is going to Miami. Great place for a new Grand Prix. Everyone is looking forward to getting their cars on track and doing the early laps.
Hosting the race in Miami underlines the enormous popularity of Formula 1, tickets for the stage sold out within a few days. We are all looking forward to this weekend.
Q: As an American, are you proud of the growing popularity of Formula 1 in North America?
Otmar Safnauer: Formula 1 has always been popular in America. I remember the first time I saw Formula 1 in Detroit in the 1980s, this race inspired me to start a career in motorsport.
Now Formula 1 is expanding its sphere of influence, opening up new cities for itself and introducing a new audience to this world-famous sport. This year we have two races in America, the next three, and who knows. There are many opportunities, our sport is focused on the future.
Q: What do you know about the circuit in Miami?
Otmar Safnauer: This is a new track, about which we don’t have much information. We worked on the simulator to determine the basic settings in advance. I hope this helps us get the weekend off to a good start.
New tracks, especially temporary tracks or street tracks, don’t offer such good grip at the beginning, so we will gradually roll out our program, experiment with configuration and settings to better prepare for qualifying and the race. This is an interesting challenge for engineers and racers. We will do everything possible.
Q: The team has brought some new products to Imola. How did these novelties work, do you put them in Miami?
Otmar Safnauer: The novelties we prepared for the A522 worked well in Imola. Our calculations have been confirmed.
This week, the new underbody, which Alonso has tested at Imola, will be installed on both cars. And although in the last race on Fernando’s car the bottom was badly damaged by the Mick Schumacher incident, we were able to restore it. In the upcoming races we will see a lot of interesting things in this important and intense race of car development during the season.
Q: What are the strengths of the team right now and what is yet to come?
Otmar Safnauer: Over the last four stages we showed good pace in qualifying, but the points will be awarded on Sunday and we were not always able to convert high starting positions into good results in the race.
The team is working hard to find the reasons and are working on several changes to the settings to improve our race pace and to work a little differently with tires. We need to find a delicate balance to maintain our pace in qualifying.
Source: F1 News
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