(Motorsport-Total.com) – Alpine has reacted to the sporting slide in the middle of the season and brought forward a new development package that was originally planned only for the Italian Grand Prix in September.
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Nevertheless, the team faced a difficult decision: only a single complete set of parts is available. This will be fitted to Pierre Gasly’s car for the race weekend in the Netherlands, even though it is expected that more components could arrive before the race on Sunday.
There are two main reasons for accelerating the schedule. On the one hand, Alpine is in the middle of a fight for fifth place in the Constructors’ Championship with Racing Bulls – basically the position as “Best of the Rest” behind the top teams.
The team is currently losing this battle: after a strong start to the season, Alpine was overtaken by Racing Bulls, as Arvid Lindblad and Liam Lawson have started to consistently score points.
In addition, Alpine has to deal with the possibility that Aston Martin will also be involved in the fight for points in the coming weekends. Although the team has only scored a single point so far this season, its competitiveness was improved by the first major update of the year in Hungary.
In Zandvoort, the team will start with improved Honda engines as well as further small aerodynamic fine-tuning on the front wing, the floor strakes, and the diffuser.
Encouraging results in the simulator
Another compelling reason for Alpine’s push is the simulator results, which have excited both drivers. But whenever one driver receives an update first, it puts the other in a dilemma.
“I had exactly the same thought yesterday,” Franco Colapinto replied in Zandvoort during a media round when asked how he deals with the possibility that his teammate gains a performance advantage.
“I asked myself: ‘What do I actually want?’ In the sim, the update is very strong, and if it is the same on track, that is extremely good for us. We need improvements,” said the Argentinian.
“At the moment, it looks good in the simulator, and in the data, it appears very strong and significant. Hopefully, we can make the steps we need to fight against Racing Bulls – and hopefully finish ahead of them.”
The basic speed of the A526 was encouraging right away, and the car itself seemed technically fascinating in many details. However, the team acted comparatively cautiously regarding rolling out updates.
While many senior engineers in the paddock spoke before the season about going through a learning phase with their cars in the first races before committing to a development direction, Alpine has been the only team to consistently follow this approach.
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The team brought a substantial upgrade package in May at the Miami Grand Prix but has generally only made track-specific fine adjustments since then. Apart from Pierre Gasly’s somewhat lucky podium in Monaco, the team has mostly fought for the lower points positions and sometimes even fallen behind. In Austria and Hungary, neither Gasly nor Colapinto made it into the top 10, while both Lawson and Lindblad scored points.
Lost ground to Racing Bulls
As a result, after pushing early into fifth place, Alpine has been overtaken by Racing Bulls in recent races. There is a vague possibility that Gasly’s haul from Monaco might still change, as an FIA appeal hearing regarding the race result is imminent.
Alpine urgently needs the new package to reverse the sporting trend. Racing Bulls has had the edge in pace since the team fitted both cars with a new floor in Montreal.
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In addition, the team has heavily strained its development and production capacities and introduced a step on one car (Lindblad’s) in Spa even before enough parts were available for both vehicles.
Balance has not been the main problem with the A526 so far, but rather what Gasly often called “pure pace,” referring to a general deficit in aerodynamic downforce.
Under the current regulations, this brings an additional disadvantage: the car is not only slower in corners and tends to slide more, which damages the tires. The lack of downforce before certain corners also impairs the power unit’s ability to recover electrical energy. This can add up to lower top speeds over the lap.
What has changed on the A526?
Alpine’s development package is the most extensive of all teams in Zandvoort. A new floor design features revised shapes across the entire geometry and at the outer edges to “improve flow quality across the entire working window and provide local aerodynamic downforce,” as the team states in the FIA’s official technical document.
This works in conjunction with changes to the leading edge of the floor as well as a newly shaped diffuser. Alpine has also redesigned the sidepods and the cover in the rear axle area and made further detailed adjustments at the rear – including the brake ducts, crash structure, and flaps on the wing.
“We had a few problems,” Gasly says in Zandvoort. “Some of them appeared in the middle of the first part of the season. Looking at the last races, we simply lack speed in almost all types of corners.”
“It is obviously the start of a new regulation with a lot of potential to be unlocked. With our development plan, we just took a bit longer than some others. Originally, these parts were actually supposed to come only in Monza,” says the Frenchman.
“The team did a good job bringing a set of these parts here to Zandvoort. And yes, we have to correct some things. Because the deficit at the start of the year was much smaller than it has been recently. Hopefully, this will bring us closer again.”
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