Alpine would 'find solution' to keep Oscar Piastri in Formula 1
Alpine have revealed more details of their plan for Oscar Piastri to progress to Formula 1 in 2023.
Oscar Piastri celebrates at the Qatar Grand Prix after joining the Alpine F1 team as development driver. (Alpine)
Executive Director Marcin Budkowski has fielded questions about the Australian's future in the lead-up to the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix.
Piastri said when he signed with the French team that his goal was a F1 race seat in 2023.
This presents a problem for Alpine if veteran Fernando Alonso wishes to stay with the team and that seat is not available.
The other car is occupied by French driver Esteban Ocon on a long-term contract.
"If the car is quick and Fernando is happy," said Budkowski, "then we will have one type of discussion."
"If that’s not the case then we will have a different type of discussion."
"But certainly we have a great talent with Oscar in the wings and if there is no seat available at Alpine I’m sure we will find a solution for him to drive a Formula 1 car and stay in the Alpine family."
This opens the door for a potential deal with another Formula 1 team to secure a drive for the rookie.
Driver-swap deals are generally run within affiliated teams, such as Red Bull and Alpha Tauri, or Ferrari and Alfa Romeo.
If not an affiliate team, they generally at least involve another team running the same engine - something Alpine does not have.
Oscar Piastri on his first track walk as Alpine development driver. (Alpine)
Regardless of the 2023 speculation, Budkowski was able to provide more detail regarding Piastri's schedule for 2022.
"Oscar is going to be very involved in the simulator and he is already doing some of this but not as much as we’d like because obviously he is racing in Formula 2 and he still needs to win that championship this year," said the Alpine executive director.
"He is going to be doing a lot of development work, a lot of simulator work, spending time in the factory, very close with the engineers, he’s going to be doing quite a lot of track running as well."
"Well, he’s going to run in Abu Dhabi for the post-season test this year."
"The regulations next year imposes to run him at two free practice sessions."
"We’ll do a bespoke testing programme for him in Formula 1 cars, to make sure he really, really ramps up."
