Permane: Now we want to beat Mercedes

After the Japanese Grand Prix, Alpine F1 returned to fourth in the Constructors’ Championship and has a very good chance of remaining in this position. The works Renault team is 13 points ahead of McLaren, confirming 2022 progress.

She was much talked and written about over the summer, but mostly because of the scandalous staffing situation that accompanied Oscar Piastri’s transfer to McLaren: the Australian refused to play for Alpine and the team had to look for another future partner for Esteban okon.

Against the background of these events, the team’s sports results faded into the background, although it scored quite stably during the same period. However, it was not without problems in this area, as Alpine lost a lot of points due to reliability problems.

“We knew there would be some problems, but we were ready,” said Alan Peremain, the team’s sporting director. “However, we tried to increase the speed of the car because it was important, and now we are very happy with the way it is going.

But now we aim to beat Mercedes and try to get to the right level for this. Of course we lost a lot of points in Singapore, but I think we have returned to normal performance in Japan and I expect this to be the case in the remaining races as well.

The car is definitely getting faster, we are gradually overtaking the top teams. Absolutely, everything is going in the right direction. I don’t even remember if there were any novelties that didn’t really work effectively.”

Matt Hartman, Alpine CTO, explained his point: “Over the years, prior to the transition to the new technical regulations, we have worked incredibly hard to introduce the new technologies needed to create a race car. This made it possible to lay a very solid foundation. We now have the most efficient technologies at our disposal, allowing the team to focus on improving aerodynamics and running gear.”

In particular, over the past year and a half, Hartman has spent a lot of time in Viry, where Renault’s engine building division is located, working with French engineers to find the most organic integration of the power plant and chassis being developed in Enstone.

If previous sitters solved their problems as they imagined it, and the team received a finished engine and only then tried to achieve the correct connection to the chassis, now all development processes are carried out, also in such an important area as choosing the optimal layout. through joint efforts. With this you can of course achieve a higher efficiency of the machine as a whole.

If the team has managed to build their most efficient car in the last six years despite the A522’s reliability issues, i.e. Since Renault returned to the World Cup with a full factory program, Alpine has every reason to believe they are doing everything right.