Things haven’t been easy for Alpine this season but their preparations for the 2024 F1 season weren’t helped by a failed crash test indirectly caused by Esteban Ocon.
The French manufacturer are bottom of the Constructors’ Championship after a very disappointing Bahrain Grand Prix.
Speaking on The Race Podcast, journalist Mark Hughes has explained some of the reasons why Alpine are in so much trouble right now.
Ocon crash test adds to Alpine woes
The downward trajectory Alpine has suffered in the last two years has been extraordinary to witness.
A revolving door of senior officials hasn’t gone to plan with Matt Harman, Dirk de Beer and Bob Bell the latest to leave the team.
Bruno Famin has gone from interim team principal to permanent leader of the manufacturer but has a lot of work to do.
He’s got to find a fix for their overweight car which came as a result of a failed crash test due to accommodations made for Esteban Ocon.
The 27-year-old driver is one of the tallest on the grid and while that’s less of a problem now than it used to be in the days of Alain Prost, it still poses an engineering conundrum to solve.
The carbon fibre-heavy livery of the Alpine in Bahrain highlights just how much weight-saving they’re trying to do.
Alpine still have plenty of problems to solve
Speaking about the problems Alpine are currently dealing with, Hughes said: “It’s ten kilos overweight, the power unit, well last year they said it was about half-a-second off the pace but they’ve made a few improvements with insulation and stuff like that.
“It’s worth a little bit less than a tenth, so let’s be generous and say it’s only four-tenths off the pace now.
“Combine that seven, seven-and-a-half tenths of lap time, where would that have put them on the Bahrain grid? On the Q2/Q3 cut-off.
“It failed one of the crash tests, partly because we understand because of modifications needed to accommodate Esteban Ocon and the weight increase then came as a result of beefing up the car to get it through that test.
“The weight can be recovered, [and] the effect of the PU could be minimised a little through more aggressive duty cycles and taking the resultant penalties later in the year.
“So, it should be possible to get it off the back of the grid.”
While Ocon wasn’t directly responsible for Alpine’s failed crash test it does sum up where the team are right now.
After entering the third year of the current set of regulations, teams should be ironing out small issues with their cars.
Instead, Alpine appear to be creating more problems for themselves, although the long-term prognosis isn’t all bad…
The post ‘We understand’: Journalist believes 27-year-old driver was the reason F1 team failed 2024 crash test appeared first on F1 Oversteer.