2022 Alpine F1 Team

[CMSMJ1]

It makes no sense to turn up without a 2022 car. It sill surely be a vanilla car and without the bells and whistles that will bring the performance into Bahrain?

[peewon]

Spot on. I dont think foregoing so much track time simply to conceal concepts makes that much sense. One of the biggest challenges is also to get the drivers used to the new cars and tyres, which by all accounts, are significantly different from previous years.

[Wouter]

[Scalexf1]

Spot on. I dont think foregoing so much track time simply to conceal concepts makes that much sense. One of the biggest challenges is also to get the drivers used to the new cars and tyres, which by all accounts, are significantly different from previous years.

At a guess, Alpine will arrive with their new engine and turbo configuration in Barcelona
So hypothetically it will be much safer and easier to run the new engine in the tyre mule car.
The engineers understand fully the car, so faster to change or rectify any issues. It will be hard for the others to understand what alpine are doing as the car is hard to benchmark.they can go about their business without too much attention.

[CMSMJ1]

Doesn't make any sense

[Jolle]

There is of course the possibility that the teaser, with the tire test mule, has been interpreted as that will be the car Alpine is taking on their first test (as in, taking their teaser literally).
Which is dodgy journalism at least. And by the same standards, a few top teams will race the FIA promo model…

[diffuser]

New brakes,suspension, gearbox, PU (cause the old will not fit the new chassis). So we'll see all of those at the first test. The ground effects(under floor tunnels) are hidden from plain view, so we'll have those too.


What they might keep from us is the final front and rear wings, diffuser, tire wake control winglets and lower rear wing.

[peewon]

Spot on. I dont think foregoing so much track time simply to conceal concepts makes that much sense. One of the biggest challenges is also to get the drivers used to the new cars and tyres, which by all accounts, are significantly different from previous years.

At a guess, Alpine will arrive with their new engine and turbo configuration in Barcelona
So hypothetically it will be much safer and easier to run the new engine in the tyre mule car.
The engineers understand fully the car, so faster to change or rectify any issues. It will be hard for the others to understand what alpine are doing as the car is hard to benchmark.they can go about their business without too much attention.

At worst, its a base version of 2022 car imo. Maybe missing some aero elements that are expected to provide only marginal performance. Otherwise its punting the test away, which I dont see happening. Running the mule car is not feasible in any meaningful way due to variety of reasons ranging from integration of new parts (PU, etc) with the old chassis to not gaining any experience for drivers with a completely different downforce profile to ground efffect cars.

[peewon]

There is of course the possibility that the teaser, with the tire test mule, has been interpreted as that will be the car Alpine is taking on their first test (as in, taking their teaser literally).
Which is dodgy journalism at least. And by the same standards, a few top teams will race the FIA promo model…

I could be mistaken but I dont think that account is a journalist. And the picture could very well be from the Abu Dhabi test

[peewon]

New brakes,suspension, gearbox, PU (cause the old will not fit the new chassis). So we'll see all of those at the first test. The ground effects(under floor tunnels) are hidden from plain view, so we'll have those too.


What they might keep from us is the final front and rear wings, diffuser, tire wake control winglets and lower rear wing.

Im gonna go out on a limb and say they test different versions of the actual wings, etc as they did last year. I think whats really important is to flatten the learning curve for the drivers so might be useful to have as much aero on the car as possible.

[Blackout]

Yeah that guy is just an Alonso fan who sometimes tries hard to get scoops by digging deep in the internet. And he deleted that tweet.
And as already said he very often get his things mixed up.

Moreover, that's probably one of their showcars. They often put a showcar in that racing bay, and the real race cars are assembled in the other racing bays.
Here you can see their RS.17 showcar (with a cut sharkfin) in that bay. And that """leaked"" car has many similarities with it (RW endplate trailing tips, DRS and RW mount shape, 'aerocat' vanes, similar mirror positioning..)

[stan_french]

Seems like Marcin won't be the only upcoming change.

https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/prost ... n/7358072/

Prost to depart Alpine F1 advisory role; Szafnauer, BWT set to join

Four-time Formula 1 champion Alain Prost has left his advisory role with the Alpine team as part of the ongoing management shake-up.

Alpine is currently undergoing structural changes as CEO Laurent Rossi flexes his muscles after the team’s first season under the name of the specialist sportscar division.

Last week Alpine announced that executive director Marcin Budkowski, who served as de facto team principal in 2021 despite the role not officially existing, has left the team. Rossi is currently running the team himself on a temporary basis.

Sources indicate that former Aston Martin team principal Otmar Szafnauer, whose name has been linked with Alpine since late last year, is expected to be announced soon in a similar role with the Anglo-French organisation.

Prost has had an on-off relationship with Alpine parent company Renault since he drove for the original works F1 outfit in 1981-83.

He was engaged as a consultant and ambassador to the Enstone team when it returned to full Renault ownership in 2015.

He took on a more formal role in July 2019 when he was appointed as a non-executive director of the UK company behind the team, as a direct replacement for Renault Group executive Thierry Bollore.

He had an annual contract with the team, and the management opted not to renew it for 2022.



In addition it is understood that Austrian water treatment company BWT is set to become a main sponsor of Alpine, suggesting that its traditional pink colours will be part of the team’s livery this year.

Szafnauer already has a good relationship with BWT and its bosses, having worked closely with the company when it was title sponsor of Force India and Racing Point.

Last year BWT had a subsidiary role at Aston Martin as Cognizant took title sponsorship, although there was still some pink on the otherwise green car.

If confirmed at Alpine, BWT would also be reunited with Esteban Ocon, who was a race driver at Force India in 2017 and 2018.

The BWT name has already disappeared from the Aston Martin website, although its departure has not been officially confirmed by the team.

An Aston Martin spokesperson told Autosport: “We don’t usually discuss the details of ongoing commercial discussions and contracts. Our full 2022 partner portfolio will be presented at our car launch event next month.”

[JPower]

Wow, Prost being shown the door is surprising.

Don’t know if these management changes a month before the car hits the track are a good or bad thing. I imagine the car and PU are almost done but the team still needs direction in the meantime.

[AeroDynamic]

I think these changes just before ‘22 screams failure. Normally shake ups happen when things need to improve when the team is leaving you rather than you leaving the team. I get the feeling Renault are very unimpressed with how things have progressed or been handled. They just keep getting rid of people. Perhaps Alonso is dominating decisions like he did in McLaren and pushing for changes. If any of this is the case, I think Alonso will be leaving in ‘23 at the latest.

[selvam_e2002]

not good for Alpine. Alonso may start to "GP2" again in mid of the season.