preferred source on Google<\/a> to your favourites list for news you can trust.<\/p>\nThe team\u2019s racing director, Dave Greenwood, said it won\u2019t take long for the old regulations and working processes to fade into the background as the new rules challenge every engineer and team member.<\/p>\n
\u201cNext year looks a bit more complicated, but it\u2019ll only be like that to begin with. Three races in, it\u2019ll feel like that\u2019s the norm,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, yeah, we get very used to what those things are quite quickly. For us, sometimes you forget about how things have gone before.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo it won\u2019t take very long for it to be the challenge that we look forward to.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou\u2019ve seen what we\u2019ve got with the [straightline] mode, with the change in the power units, with the energy management, all of those things, they\u2019re all going to add a significant challenge to the driver and to the engineering team as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut that\u2019s our job to develop our tools and help the driver as much as we can.\u201d<\/p>\n
Asked where the team is at in terms of its preparations for 2026, with the new car set to be revealed on the 23rd of January, Greenwood revealed that the Enstone squad is feeling optimistic.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think every team has milestones that they\u2019re ticking through. We\u2019re very happy with where we are,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re not going to go into too much detail, but we\u2019re absolutely on plan, on track for everything we need!\u201d<\/p>\n
This includes the challenge of meeting the new minimum weight limit of 770kg, although Greenwood opted against confirming just how close Alpine will get to this to start the year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think most people have been on record to say it\u2019s challenging, but that, again, is a challenge that our design team back at base takes with the sort of energy and vigour to try and meet it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wouldn\u2019t like to quote numbers of where we\u2019re at, but we\u2019re happy, and we know we\u2019re doing the best job we can to hit what\u2019s quite an aggressive target, but not an unachievable one.\u201d<\/p>\n
With Nielsen returning to Alpine after a previous stint of a decade at the team in its Benetton\/Renault guise in the 2000s, including through its title wins in 2005 and \u201906, he is one of the best-placed personnel to speak of the energy within the squad as it aims to rebuild to a position of becoming race winners and title contenders again.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s a spirit. It\u2019s not necessarily embodied by people who have been there the whole time, like me and others, on and off,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think there\u2019s a spirit and a \u2018can-do\u2019. And this has been the nice thing about going back there.<\/p>\n
\u201cI know it\u2019s a cliche, but there are a lot of people with racing running through their blood, and they want to be competitive, and they don\u2019t mind putting in the hours.<\/p>\n
\u201cOur factory is now working\u2026 the average working week is 55 hours, because that\u2019s what we need to do to get this car out. And we don\u2019t have any trouble with people doing it.<\/p>\n
\u201cThat\u2019s where you realise it\u2019s not a normal industry. We don\u2019t have people saying, \u2018Oh, well, I can\u2019t. I\u2019ve got to do this or do that, \u2018 or \u2018it\u2019s my wife\u2019s birthday\u2019.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut everybody understands that\u2019s the sacrifice to get where you are, and it\u2019s a very sobering kind of experience to be surrounded by so many people who are prepared to sacrifice so much.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo I think that is a constant. From the beginning of Enstone to today, there are a lot of very dedicated people there who are willing to absolutely put the effort and the sacrifice in because they want to move the team forward, whether that\u2019s people who have been there for 30 years or five years.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read Next:\u00a0Daniel Ricciardo teases shock motorsport comeback as \u2018itch\u2019 returns<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alpine is \u201cvery happy\u201d with its preparations for the F1 2026 season, believing that everything is on track…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":373426,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[821,64,63,817,813,816,818,44,85,2053],"class_list":["post-373425","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-alpine","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-home-page","tag-news","tag-sports","tag-steve-nielsen"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373425","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=373425"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/373425\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/373426"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=373425"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=373425"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=373425"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}