Alfa Romeo F1 had very difficult starts in Bahrain and Jeddah. Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou completely failed to take off in the first race, and the Chinese driver also had great difficulty in Saudi Arabia when starting (photo).
The team revealed that the engine speed was difficult to stabilize at the start, and Jan Monchaux, the technical director, even explained that Zhou was particularly struggling to find the ideal engine speed. Monchaux notes today that his team is not the only one to experience such setbacks.
“It looks like a lot of teams, apart from maybe two or three, are currently struggling with engine wobble at the start” he explained. “It’s not just us. When the cars are in single file and you look at them, you’ll see they all vibrate a bit.”
“So it’s something that’s not going to be fixed very quickly, in my opinion, because it’s the drivetrain, which means it might be a matter of stiffness, weight, position clutch, new tires, or a heavier car.”
“Right now it’s a bit early to tell and personally I haven’t figured it all out yet. But there are ways to adapt to it. We’ve been able to make decent starts and that just asking the rider to be much gentler with the throttle and clutch than he might be under normal circumstances.”
The advantages of a C42 below the minimum weight
The particularity of Alfa Romeo F1 this year is a car under the minimum weight limit, where many teams have an overweight single-seater. Monchaux explains the benefits to this, and admits this situation won’t last forever.
“I can’t comment on others, but I hear a lot of people complaining regarding being overweight. We don’t have that kind of problem at the moment and it certainly helps because the weight you slows down. It also helps us in terms of tire management.”
“We’re not talking regarding a difference of 100 kilos, but for us, at the moment, it’s a plus. However, I think that at the latest in Barcelona most teams will be level, so we don’t We can’t just relax, because the others will catch up with us.”
“The advantage is that right now we can focus on performance and not on aero performance, trying to reduce the weight of the car, because it’s quite a complicated exercise during the season. “
“It’s also very expensive. So in itself it’s better in terms of the budget cap, to be in a situation where you don’t have to spend a fortune to remove three, four, five or ten kilos from your car, which is always very, very painful.”
