Only two races have passed in the 2022 Formula 1 World Championship and the balance is still rather precarious, especially in the middle of the group, also considering that there are another 21 GPs to be played on the horizon. Between Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, however, one of the teams to have provided the best answers, especially in relation to what we saw last year, was the Alpine. The French team is currently fourth in the constructors’ classification, first of the others behind the ‘usual’ trio of Ferrari, Red Bull and Mercedes. The team based in Enstone and Viry placed both their cars in points in Bahrain and would have managed to do the same in Saudi Arabia if an engine problem hadn’t knocked Alonso’s car offside.
Recently Andrew Shovlin, one of the most important Mercedes engineers, had stressed that for the Brackley team it is an advantage to have a certain gap over their rivals. This, he says, could help the silver arrows to experiment more in an attempt to bring the performances of Ferrari and Red Bull closer together. But at Alpine the goal is precisely to not let the reigning world champions among the constructors sleep peacefully, trying to put the third position in the standings. “It’s a carrot, it’s a carrot to keep pushing – said Szafnauer in reference to the team of Toto Wolff, as reported by the site GPFans – it will take a few races to understand where we are in the starting order. Then, as I said, it will be a development contest“.
Thinking objectively, however, even the Alpine boss himself is aware that at this moment Hamilton and Russell have a better vehicle available than that of his drivers: “[Sul] race pace, watching the race [di Gedda], they are clearly in front of us. Maybe they had some problems in qualifying. We will push hard to try to compete with them, but today it seems that they have a better car than ours “concluded Szafnauer.
#Mercedes #carrot #Alpine #FormulaPassionit