Like all F1 teams, Alpine completed its winter testing this Saturday. In terms of figures, the French team was the seventh most active, with a total of more than 2800 km covered during the six full days. Fernando Alonso signed, on the last day, the fourth best absolute time of the Bahrain tests and above all showed some optimism following noticing an improvement in the general behavior of the A522 compared to Barcelona.
Of course, and this is all the more true this season in view of the significant regulatory change, caution is in order. And a large part of what promises to be the longest season in history (23 Grands Prix) will be dictated by the teams’ ability to develop their cars efficiently. A rate of development which is likely to be particularly high during this campaign, as the concepts are understood and assimilated by the structures.
Referring to this subject at the microphone of Canal+, Laurent Rossi, CEO of Alpine, also explained that part of the work will consist of keeping an eye on the competition, and in particular vis-à-vis the technical orientations not retained by Enstone in its own development for 2022. “We already have a schedule of innovations throughout the races to come on the current single-seater and then, as it should be, we are also working on alternative tracks”did he declare.
Esteban Ocon at the wheel of the Alpine A522
“So, for the moment, we are not putting a lot of energy on the alternative tracks but they are nourished at the same time by what we learned during the whole year of development last year, that is- that is to say that we sometimes had to deal with development forks, saying to ourselves: ‘We are going to take this path or that path.’ We decided to continue in one direction, which gave the single-seater today, so each time we ‘cut a branch’ on the nose, the sidepods, the floor, the fins…”
“But we still kept paths that were promising on the back burner. And so we finally have a main path, which is the progression of this car and the innovations that we intend to bring to it – and we will bring it to it in the future. year to continue to maintain performance or to improve it no matter what – and parallel paths which can be nourished by observing what others are doing.”
“If we realize that on our parallel paths we had chosen some concepts which are now taken up by others, we will perhaps say to ourselves that we will continue to study them in parallel and see if we need to switch . I think all teams do that.”
However, switching fully to these parallel paths if deemed necessary will be, barring disaster, a medium-term exercise, and in particular in the design work of the A523. “I call them ‘parallel paths’ because if we were going to do radical switches, they would rather be done in the off-season. [entre 2022 et 2023] because we are not going to break the performance of the single-seater, unless we are really not performing well. For now, we will continue to bet on our choice.”
