Alpine will debut a new rear wing for its A522 competitor in Spain, where the Enstone team hopes to reclaim the points with both of its cars.
Since the start of the season, Alpine’s 2022 car has been in the mix in F1’s midfield, but only Esteban Ocon has consistently delivered points, while Fernando Alonso has had a string of bad luck since the first race in Bahrain in March.
Alpine which is unwilling to be surpassed by its competitors, is expecting a slew of enhancements for the Spanish Grand Prix. They will also participate in the Circuit de Catalunya with a development team.
“We’ve got a new rear wing coming for Spain,” said team boss Otmar Szafnauer. “It should be more efficient than the last time we ran there, and it should be a little bit more performant, so we will have that for both cars.”
Alpine’s development work, on the other hand, is addressing a problem that plagues the F1 field: the cars’ excessive weight, which teams are grudgingly striving to lower with each upgrade.
Since Imola, Alpine sporting director Alan Permane says the team’s engineers have been able to reduce the load carried by the A522, but work is still being done.
“We’ve taken a bit, but there’s still more to come,” he said. “We’ve got some good steps in that area coming. We are still a little bit on the high side weight wise.
“I don’t think quite as bad as some others, but we’re certainly not as good as some others. I hear some cars are under or absolutely on the weight limit.
“We are a little bit over, but we’ve made improvements steadily from the first race and are chipping away at it.”
Szafnauer lays up Alpine’s minimum criterion for this weekend’s round of racing in Barcelona.
“The aim is for us to have both cars inside the points, which we’re yet to achieve since the first race of the season,” said the Alpine team principal.
“If we’re going to achieve our goals for the year, then this is the minimum requirement the remaining Grands Prix.”
“We’ve demonstrated consistently we have a competitive car and it’s important now that we convert that promising pace into points on Sundays.”
“We’re certainly aiming to bounce back from Miami by having a much better, and cleaner, race weekend. We can only control what is in front of us, so that’s the target in Barcelona and both drivers are ready to deliver.”
