The Alpine F1 drivers managed to earn points in both Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, but the team is not completely satisfied with the results, if only because engine problems prevented Fernando Alonso from finishing in Jeddah. After that, the two-time world champion admitted: “The feeling behind the wheel is better than the real results.”
In developing the A522, a next-generation ground effect machine, the Enstone team went their separate ways, which could provide some benefit, but this was offset when the teams were allowed to stiffen the bottom of the car during winter testing by adding extra add racks. This was one of the measures to reduce the influence of such an undesirable phenomenon as the longitudinal build-up of the machine at high speeds.
Pat Fry, chief of engineering at Alpine F1, admitted they lost the advantage they had hoped for after that.
“We designed the car to be as efficient as possible, but at the same time we realized that it was heavier, it was a little too heavy,” said Fry. “We made the underside quite stiff and as the top of the A522 is quite wide, this also added stiffness.
But when the racks were added, we were slightly upset. I think it helped other teams a lot, but we didn’t add racks like that because our design was already pretty rigid.
However, this is also part of the game. I had to accept this and take it into account when developing the next batch of technical innovations. At the same time, two tasks need to be solved: to increase the efficiency of the machine and get rid of excess weight. Obviously, the main thing is to improve the results on the circle, but it is necessary to act carefully.
In the next two or three races, technical innovations will appear on our car, but this is all our own development, thought before we looked closely at the cars of the rivals. Of course there will be more updates in the future because now everyone has seen some interesting fixes on other teams’ machines. But at the same time we want to try to keep the weight of the chassis as low as possible, which is not an easy task.”
Source: F1 News
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