Mark Hughes on the new Alpine A523

The Renault factory team was last to present its new car, the A523, which has a number of notable differences from last year’s model. Mark Hughes, technical expert of the championship’s official site, drew attention to the most important of them.

The Alpine A523 is a very significant evolution of last year’s team’s car, it has completely redesigned body panels and overall there are many differences – from a new front wing and wider nose fairing to a new rear suspension based on the use of push rods.

The team set ambitious goals in areas such as aerodynamics and weight reduction, and took an aggressive approach to achieving them. As a result, the chassis turned out to be lighter than the minimum permissible limit, which allows you to put ballast, and this makes it possible to better tune the car to the characteristics of a particular track.

The new front wing hangs from a wider, flatter nose cone. In this case, the lower plane of the wing is attached to the nose and does not hang from it. According to Matt Harman, Technical Director of Alpine F1, the different nose structure offers more freedom in adjusting the elements of the wing, which in turn offers more possibilities for finding optimal settings.

The front suspension is still pushrod based, but the geometry has been changed to better resist nose dive under braking. This achieves the stability of the aerodynamic body kit, and for a new generation of cars using the ground effect, this quality has become even more important, because the behavior of the chassis determines the proportions in which the airflow is distributed, which part passes under the floor and that flows above the car.

If this ratio changes too much during braking and cornering, and suddenly less air gets under the floor than is needed to work effectively, the rear of the car can lose stability.

At the same time, in the middle of the corner, when the car becomes level, the balance is somewhat restored, although ideally the opposite effect should be achieved: the rear of the car should work steadily as it enters the corner, and in the middle stage it should behave more smoothly. All teams have made significant efforts to achieve this as Formula 1 transitioned to the current technical regulations.

The front suspension geometry shows how Alpine engineers and designers have worked to achieve efficient aerodynamic performance. While last year’s A522 was generally well balanced and more stable on the track than other teams in the middle of the pack, it couldn’t compete with the top teams in terms of downforce.

On the A523, the front, inlet part of the Venturi tunnels is organized completely differently, and this indicates a reworking of the entire bottom area, therefore it affects the formation of the airflow differently.

The location of the radiators and the geometry of the side pontoons were largely determined by the team’s desire to accomplish the main task – to achieve the most efficient and stable operation of the bottom. This was also dictated by the choice of front and rear suspension geometry.

As with nearly all 2023 machines, the A523’s radiator face has been revised, allowing Alpine to make the side pontoons narrower, but the “shoulder” above them has become more massive. At the top of the pontoons there is now a kind of deep channel, like on Ferrari cars, that directs air to the extra rear wing, preventing the flow from flowing around the edges of the cockpit. Due to this, it is possible to maintain high current energy and to achieve more efficient operation of the cooling system shutters in this area.

Last year’s Alpine car had a very rigid floor and a wide body, which avoided aerodynamic build-up and made it possible to control the car’s behavior by choosing the optimal ride height. As the team believes that the A523 will have a more stable aerodynamic body kit, likely due to the new nose and front wing configuration, it was decided to abandon the concept of wide side pontoons.

The rear of the car has also been completely redesigned, with the team moving from a linkage suspension design to a pushrod design. As Matt Harman said, this made the knot easier and lighter. The lower position of the suspension balancers, in combination with the pushrods, probably also resulted in a lower body profile in the rear axle area.

In addition, Renault mechanics have worked to improve reliability and have also managed to lower the temperature of the hot part of the turbine, and these measures promise some improvement in the overall efficiency of the power plant.