In the first 2022 Formula 1 pre-season test session held in Barcelona, Alpine never gave the opportunity to be talked about except on the last day, when a hydraulic failure triggered a fire on the A522 of Fernando Alonso and forced the team to finish the Catalan tests prematurely.
At first glance a very complex three days for the Enstone team, made up of a breakdown that made them lose almost an entire day of work and without chronological jolts that in the first seasonal tests do not count for anything, but often give that pinch of morale plus it never hurts.
In the face of appearances, the climate in Alpine seems to be rather optimistic in view of the first part of the 2022 season. Alan Permane, Alpine sporting director, took stock of his team’s three-day Barcelona test, flaunting an optimism that, in the absence of his words, it would have been hardly predictable.
“I don’t want to sound like the one making excuses and I’m not saying we will beat Mercedes and Red Bull, but I think we are in a good position. The last lap Fernando did before stopping on the track, even if it was only one lap, can be compared to what Max Verstappen did at the same time as him. And Max used the DRS. “
“If we superimpose the laps on the GPS, which we can do with the systems we have supplied by the FIA, the tracks of the two laps are almost identical, apart from the straights where we lose an enormous amount of time.”
“Fernando was very happy with the car. We found some significant things on the set up during the night between Thursday and Friday and we really fixed the rear.”
“If we had put in another C3 at that time, we would have taken off another 3 or 4 tenths. We would have been very, very close. I don’t mean that everything is going well and that we are completely relaxed. Of course we are worried, but we will certainly not be able to. bottom of the ranking “.
“My gut tells me that we are probably a little closer to the top of the table than at the end of 2021”.
Alpine has decided not to use the DRS in the Barcelona tests. A singular choice, which Permane tried to motivate: “I’ll be honest, it’s related to the maximum speed, so it’s a question of load. We’re just cautious. It’s not that Alpine couldn’t use it or we were afraid of breaking something. It was just a matter of caution”.
“We just thought not to take any chances. We used this week to do kilometers, then we will go to Bahrain and then we will be ready to do our job. It is a shame not to have used the DRS in Barcelona, because it is a big gain in terms of performances. For us it means having lost more than 7 tenths per lap in Barcelona. So a lot of time. But at this point of the season it doesn’t matter. “
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