Among the great mysteries of the three days of testing held in Bahrain is Alpine, which has remained in the shadows, following its program without major titles. Almost one hundred laps less than the AlphaTauri, leader of the standings for the number of laps completed, and ahead only of McLaren, which had to contend with reliability problems in the front area of the car as in last season.
What was also surprising was the lack of a real race simulation by the French team, which only had to settle for medium-length stints, if not for a run of around twenty laps on the final day with Esteban Ocon at the wheel . However, the Alpine engineers don’t seem worried, partly because they worked on the planned schedule anyway, partly because they managed to solve some reliability problems on the new systems that could have jeopardized the race weekend.
“Our intention for this test was to learn, that’s what we wanted to prioritize. That’s why we spent a lot of time in preliminary tests, to make sure that the reliability was up to date. We had a few problems during the program, most of them of which related to the new systems of the car, which we had to configure. This slowed us down a bit from an operational point of view. But we are now well advanced, “explained Matt Harman, technical director of the transalpine team.
Alpine will show up at next race weekend with a new package of updates, the first in a development program that will continue throughout the season. Harman explained that new features will also be tested in the first free practice sessions that will allow the car to be lowered and run closer to the ground.
“The ride height of the car, we know, is a key performance differentiator. We have technology that allows us to run a little lower than last year. we will test for the first time in Friday practice of the first race weekend”.
Esteban Ocon on the track during testing.
Photo by: Alpine
Looking at the car on the track, it immediately caught the eye how the A523 seemed to adopt very rigid set-ups, which clearly highlighted the roughness of the Bahraini asphalt, extremely bumpy especially in the final areas of the sprints. Sensations also confirmed by Alpine itself, which confirmed its decision to try very rigid set-ups for some assessments that will come in handy during the season.
“I’m sure you’ve seen some footage, we ran with quite stiff set-ups and this works in some conditions. We need to try. At this track you don’t tend to be very, very stiff. Although during the season there will be some circuits we’re going to optimize and leverage that, hence the test. But yeah, I think we’ve learned a lot.”
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