Alpine has upgrades…but only for one car.
The Alpine Formula 1 team will introduce this weekend at the Emilia Romagna (Imola) Grand Prix the first major improvements to the Alpine A522. The ‘problem’ is that only one of the parts has arrived on time, and the French team will have to decide whether to mount it on Esteban Ocon’s car or Fernando Alonso’s.
Alan Permane, sporting director of Alpine, has explained that the improvement that the Alpine team will bring to Italy will be a new flat bottom, something that was initially going to happen in Miami, but that will finally arrive in the fourth round of the season after a great effort made by the Enstone structure.
VIDEO: This is Fernando Alonso’s Alpine A522
“We have a major update for Imola, we have a new flat bottom,” Alan Permane told RacingNews365. “I think we will only have it for one car at the moment. It was scheduled to arrive in Miami, but we have managed to bring it to Imola. I trust it a lot,” he explained.
Alpine arrives at Imola with very good feelings, after Fernando Alonso came to dream of pole position at the Australian GP, the last race held to date. However, everything went wrong for the Spaniard, who suffered an accident (caused by a hydraulic problem) before the end of qualifying and, in the race, was affected by the strategy.
In the end, what could have been a podium place for Alonso, was a seventeenth (and last) place. His partner, Esteban Ocon, saved the furniture with the seventh position.
Improvements for Alonso or for Ocon?
If a single flat bottom finally arrives at Imola, the Alpine team will have to decide whether to mount it on Alonso’s car or Ocon’s. If we look at the drivers’ classification, the bottom would have to be for the Frenchman, who has 18 points more than Alonso, but the Spaniard’s experience could be key in order to carry out tests and squeeze the maximum potential of the new component.
Beyond that, it is impossible to predict how the Alpine A522 will perform on the Italian circuit this weekend. In the first two races, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, Alpine was struggling in the middle of the grid, before making an unexpected step forward in Australia.
Alan Permane believes the A522 is better suited to circuits with high-speed corners like Australia… and, as he thinks Imola is similar in some ways to Albert Park, he is optimistic going into the weekend. If the upgrades work and he rides them, maybe Alonso can get the bad taste out of his mouth from Australia.
