Christian, can we start with you, and just talk about what we saw in FP1 first of all and the impact of the new front wing technical directive. What were the drivers saying? How was the car to set up?
Christian Horner: Well, the drivers were making all the usual comments about understeer and front grip and so on. So, the change is reasonably subtle, but it is reasonably significant. Now whether it’s a net same effect for each of the teams is difficult to tell, but, yeah, they were just working on getting a balance. It’s incredibly hot out there, and so the tyres are getting a bit of a pounding. Particularly now we’re on the old circuit configuration. The front left really gets a hard time around here. So, I think it’s going to take more than one session to see if there is an impact. Or if so, how it’s affected the different cars.
Is there more head scratching for the engineers? Is the car harder to balance now as a result of this change?CH: Again, difficult to say. It didn’t sound from the driver’s comments too different to a normal Friday. For sure, it is different, and I think there’s a lot to understand. And it’s probably on long runs as well as short runs that it’s going to play a factor here. Still early days, but the net effect to us has been rather small.
Now Red Bull has a fantastic record here in Barcelona. Max Verstappen going for his fourth consecutive win here. Just how much confidence do you have coming into the weekend?CH: I mean, you’ve got to say McLaren are going be the favourite here this weekend. They’ve looked incredibly strong throughout all the early races. We take a lot of hope from the race we had in Imola, where we had great pace and we were able to win that race. But for sure, in these temperatures, they’re going to be super competitive. Now whether it’s Lando or Oscar is difficult to say. But for us, what’s crucial is we definitely try and take points off them this weekend. Yes, we’re only approximately a third of the way through the championship with a long way to go, but we need to start nibbling away at their points advantage.
In the past, Barcelona has been a good barometer of a car’s potential. Is that still the case?CH: I think Barcelona is a proper workout – high-speed, medium-speed, not so much low-speed these days. But if you’ve got a good working chassis, then you’ll see that here, particularly with the range of corners and also how hard the car is on the tyres. That’s going to play a crucial role in the race on Sunday.
Flavio, if we could come to you now. It’s been 12 months since you were announced as Alpine’s executive adviser. How do you feel that year has been for the team?Flavio Briatore: Good afternoon to everybody. Oh, it’s less than that. It’s 10months. I see my pay cheque it’s ten months only! It’s not 11. Fine. You know? We’re back in the business, with Alpine. Not easy because the team has gone through a lot of change, especially in the last four or five years, not only now. But little by little, we try to put the team together, the people together. We’re looking for next year as well – for the new engine and the new gearbox from Mercedes-Benz. So, this is our goal for next year. In the meantime, we need to be more competitive. We are not competitive for the moment, like I want, but takes time. You see this maestro next to me, it takes a lot of time to build a winning car, a winning race, a winning team. I know I’ve done it before. I hope I’ll do it again.
How far through that process are you? Because you said recently you’d like to be challenging for the world title in 2027. Do you have everything you need at Enstone to do that?FB: You need a dream as well, you know. When you are in Formula 1, you’re dreaming as well to do the job. You hope. And in this moment, the team is quite new. The team is not performing like I wanted because we still have… a lot of the situation in the team is not clear. But we need to clear up everything. Before we start performing like I want, I believe we need all of 2025 now, and we need 2026 to be competitive, to at least sometimes see the podium very close. These are what we’re looking for. And why not 2027? We see what happened to Red Bull. We see what happened to everybody else. Depends as well on what kind of driver we have in 2027.
It’s been a month now since Ollie Oakes left the role of Team Principal at Alpine. How far through the process of finding a replacement are you?FB: We’re looking. For the moment, nothing changed. I feel sorry for Ollie, honestly, because I had a very good relationship with him. He was a good team principal. Everybody knows for personal reasons he stopped and resigned from Alpine. We’re looking. We don’t want to make any mistake. I’m prepared to take some time. But the moment we decide what is the new team manager, put in this way, we’ll tell you.
What qualities are you looking for in that person?CH: Cheap.
FB: Cheap? No. This month’s the difference, I have between 10 months, 11 months. Now we’re looking for somebody, you know, there’s a lot of people it is possible to be doing this kind of job. But we’re looking for somebody good, somebody who understands, somebody who wants to be part of the team. I know a few people who want to be part of this new trip with Alpine. We decide quick.
Mario, if we could come to you now. Let’s start by talking about the C6 tyre compound. It’s had a couple of races. How would you assess its performance so far?Mario Isola: We had mixed feedback from the teams. I believe that it’s quite normal when you have a new compound, especially a soft compound like the C6. The compound is quite close to the C5. Ideally, I would like to see in the future a C6 that is a more aggressive choice, different from the current one. We didn’t have a lot of time to test and develop this compound. It was something that we felt at the end of last season – that we needed a compound that was softer than C5. So, at the moment, I’m reasonably happy, and I’m looking for Canada where we’ll probably get more information on the C6.
You’ve now announced your tyre compounds up to the summer break. What are the highlights?MI: We have more information now compared to the first draft of the compound selection. And talking to F1 teams and drivers, and the FIA of course, it is clear we need to be a bit more aggressive or find a way to encourage teams towards a two-stop strategy. That was not a choice for the races where we went one step softer. So at the moment, we modified the selection for Silverstone – we’ll go one step softer with C2, C3, and C4. And we also decided to skip one level in Spa. So instead of C2, C3, and C4, we go with C1, C3, and C4. That means between C1 and C3 – the Hard and the Medium – you have a much bigger delta. If teams want to be aggressive, they have to use C3 and C4 on a two-stop. If they want to be conservative, they use C1 and C3, but that means they are slower. So, I’m curious to see if it works.
Questions From The Floor
(Giuseppe Marino – Motorionline.com) Flavio, could we see Mick Schumacher racing for Alpine in Formula 1 in 2025 or 2026?FB: Well, I’m not sure why we’re talking about Schumacher now. We are here in 2025. I don’t understand. What you want to know?
CH: Are you going to sign Mick Schumacher?
FB: Yeah. Sure. Everybody said that. I don’t think it’s the question to ask here, now. Next question.
Just to be clear, is Mick going to be signed?FB: I don’t want to talk about that.
(Ian Parkes – RacingNews365) Question for Christian. That second seat alongside Max has always been very problematic to fill. Yuki’s obviously got his opportunity at the minute, but we know he’s out of contract at the end of this season. How impressed have you been with Isack Hadjar so far this season, and could he be a possibility for even later this season or 2026 perhaps?CH: I think I’m going to take a leaf out of Flavio’s book and say, ‘I don’t want to answer it’. Look, it’s early days for Yuki. He’s still settling in. He’s been in Q3, scored points, he’s scored points from the pit lane. He’s had a few incidents as well, so he has a long way to go. We’ll decide. We’ve got plenty of time on our side.
(Jack Smith – Motorsport Monday) Christian, Max said yesterday that he doesn’t feel as if he’s in a title fight at the moment. Do you share that sort of glass-half-empty approach of his, or do you still feel that the McLaren pair are competing against each other gives Max an edge to chip away at both of them?CH: Well, look, we’ve got to make sure we keep in touch. And to beat them, we’ve got to start taking points off them. Imola was strong for us. Monaco wasn’t a strong race for us. They are the car to beat. They’ve got two strong drivers, and the car’s performing very well. So, it’s down to us to make improvements and get performance on the car over this summer part of the championship and make sure that we hang on to their coattails before the summer break and try and build a bit of momentum.
Check out our Friday gallery from Barcelona here.
