2021 Alpine F1 Team

[Bisonas]

I think ppl are over reacting a bit.
I don't think the Alpine A521 is a lost cause. Not yet at least. There is some pace in that car.
Mclaren, Ferrari, Alpine, Alpha Tauri and Aston martin are all close to each other.
I would put Mclaren at the front and Aston martin at the back of the middlefield.
I do believe Alpine has better pace than Aston Martin atm and that it is not that far back from Mclaren and Ferrari.
We would have to wait for a problem free race, to find out.

[search]

both cars would most likely have finished behind Raikkonen, even without the DNF and collision. Sure, Bahrain is not a representative track, but pace-wise Alpine was no competition to those other midfield cars yesterday

[RedNEO]

both cars would most likely have finished behind Raikkonen, even without the DNF and collision. Sure, Bahrain is not a representative track, but pace-wise Alpine was no competition to those other midfield cars yesterday

Alonso had deployment problems after 10 laps so they had to reduce his car performance so it’s hard to judge but he was attacking instead of defending before that happened so he probably would have ended up in the top ten.

Ocon is another story.. he might have made it to 11th without Vettel spinning him round.

[RedNEO]

Agreed. It’s honestly shocking to see how low the quality control bar is at the moment.

Honda changed both Gasly and Perez ES and CE, Red Bull had glitches with Perez's car, Williams had problems on Latifi's car, Haas had a brake by wire failure on Mazepin's car, Ferrari had glitches on Sainz car...

Everybody has had issues all weekend long and you're taking a dig at quality control at Alpine for a deployment issue on Alonso's car? I don't think you are judging fairly.

Can’t let complacency kick in or it’s over. Can you really compare to other cars anyway? Nobody else is running a chassis and engine that’s hardly been touched since 2019. This PU should be practically indestructible and have rock solid reliability as a bare minimum.

This was there strat, hit the ground running with a proven PU that’s done two seasons so it’s a little disappointing to see battery problems after 10 laps in the first race. It might seem like I’m being harsh on them but that’s only because I can see the level they will need to be at next year to be taken seriously. I’m sure they know now how important it is to hit the ground running for next year, this has been an important lesson.

[RedNEO]

This is what I can’t wrap my head around.. they “claimed” to be focused on the new regs as a reason as to why they didn’t bother to alter the 2019 car.

But surely if everything rests on that why wouldn’t they at least make sure the new engine is not a dud by putting it into a new 2020 chassis? I mean you can lose or gain a lot of performance/reliability just by how good the packaging is so you’d think they would want to test that before the new regs and make sure it’s actually as good and reliable as they hope it is. The whole thing is just baffling considering they had another chance to do it in 2021 and failed to take the decision while McLaren saw the opportunity to change practically there whole car and jumped at the opportunity. Now they are stuck again with an engine package that’s going to be useless next year. It doesn’t make any sense..

They probably needed to change the chassis to install the new PU in 2021. They decided it was not the best use of tokens and resources. It's hard to argue against it...

I personally don’t buy it, if a team with slightly smaller but similar budget in McLaren has enough resources to do it I’d expect the same from Renault at least. I think the real problem was that decision was taken under Cyril’s leadership for whatever reason and now he’s gone other people are having to pick up the pieces. I saw a quote that actually showed they probably would have done that but it was too late to change.

[RedNEO]

just watched race again, until lap 17 alonso was fighting with mclaren and ferrari without any problem

I rewatched it back just now and he went from attacking the McLaren of Dan going into turn 11 on lap 7 to dropping out of DRS in a few corners.. I think that’s when the deployment problem started because he was overtaken by Stroll down the pit straight the next lap very easily.

[RedNEO]

I think ppl are over reacting a bit.
I don't think the Alpine A521 is a lost cause. Not yet at least. There is some pace in that car.
Mclaren, Ferrari, Alpine, Alpha Tauri and Aston martin are all close to each other.
I would put Mclaren at the front and Aston martin at the back of the middlefield.
I do believe Alpine has better pace than Aston Martin atm and that it is not that far back from Mclaren and Ferrari.
We would have to wait for a problem free race, to find out.

Something doesn’t add up though.. because despite two safety cars Ocon never made any impression on moving forwards to where McLaren and Ferrari were fighting in the top 10.

Alonso’s race was even more confusing, because he looked like he could actually battle them but he literally dropped like a stone after lap 8 because of the deployment problem.

So i think some of this is just Alonso and his Sunday ability to punch above his weight. If we use Ocon who said before the race that he thought the car had top ten pace.. by watching his progress it didn’t look like it. Maybe this is just a bad circuit for them but so far the car didn’t really deserve to be inside the top ten unfortunately.

[RedNEO]

[diffuser]

Alpine is 8th fastest car just ahead of williams and haas. they should switch focus to year 2022 asap.

They have, you could argue that they never switched to 2021... There is always gonna be some people on 2021 this early on, you just don't have any manufacturing for 2022 at this point, not like you have wings to make and stuff. The PU guy have been flat out on 2022 for some time now.

it would have made sense to test new PU this year and then focus on Aero and other bits of car to prepare for 2022 regulation changes. Honda has surprised a lot , Tsuonda was no where at start of straights on Hard tyres and by end of straight over took alonso on mediums

Don't forget Alonso was having brake problems at that time and his Deployment was down as a result. if you're down 160HP, it's gonna make a HUGE difference.

On the PU front, I agree. I don't like Taffin stating publically about not having taken a direction on front compressor. He didn't exude alot of confidence when he said that. He'll have to decide soon. The front compressor is only a packaging difference, from a power perspective it doesn't make much of a difference.

If they've already decided on Front Compressor PU, Taffin is just trying to keep us off his scent, then most of the parts preexisting parts wouldn't have been of any use in 2021. So maybe it's a huge cost saving going this way...who knows.

[diffuser]

This is what I can’t wrap my head around.. they “claimed” to be focused on the new regs as a reason as to why they didn’t bother to alter the 2019 car.

But surely if everything rests on that why wouldn’t they at least make sure the new engine is not a dud by putting it into a new 2020 chassis? I mean you can lose or gain a lot of performance/reliability just by how good the packaging is so you’d think they would want to test that before the new regs and make sure it’s actually as good and reliable as they hope it is. The whole thing is just baffling considering they had another chance to do it in 2021 and failed to take the decision while McLaren saw the opportunity to change practically there whole car and jumped at the opportunity. Now they are stuck again with an engine package that’s going to be useless next year. It doesn’t make any sense..

They probably needed to change the chassis to install the new PU in 2021. They decided it was not the best use of tokens and resources. It's hard to argue against it...

I personally don’t buy it, if a team with slightly smaller but similar budget in McLaren has enough resources to do it I’d expect the same from Renault at least. I think the real problem was that decision was taken under Cyril’s leadership for whatever reason and now he’s gone other people are having to pick up the pieces. I saw a quote that actually showed they probably would have done that but it was too late to change.

CAP is 140M this year. You got to presume that McLaren and Renault can easily get to that.

Alot of this year's car started getting developed after August 2020. We saw those conversation with Keys last year with McLaren, the new nose introduction cause they wouldn't have been able to do it in 2021. there was alot of Homologation conversations last year with when stuff had to be done by. Makes you wonder what Alpine was doing at that time.

You couldn't do wind tunnel stuff with the 2022 regs in 2020 but there is alot of NEW 2022 things that needed to get done.

Blackout made a very good point, this Tub is in it's 3ird year. It limits what you can do NEW with it.

[RedNEO]

CAP is 140M this year. You got to presume that McLaren and Renault can easily get to that.

Alot of this year's car started getting developed after August 2020. We saw those conversation with Keys last year with McLaren, the new nose introduction cause they wouldn't have been able to do it in 2021. there was alot of Homologation conversations last year with when stuff had to be done by. Makes you wonder what Alpine was doing at that time.

You couldn't do wind tunnel stuff with the 2022 regs in 2020 but there is alot of NEW 2022 things that needed to get done.

Blackout made a very good point, this Tub is in it's 3ird year. It limits what you can do NEW with it.

It begs the question why weren’t they doing what McLaren was and requesting to the FIA to trade there tokens for new engine architecture installation instead. The engine was supposed to be introduced this year so they really should’ve been keen to make sure it’s installed like McLaren.

The old management was lacking in being able to react and adapt to changing circumstances that the pandemic caused.

[diffuser]

Looks like they had 2 issues, the first started after the first pit stop.

https://www.thedrive.com/accelerator/39 ... ich-baggie

The Alpine team's new executive director Marcin Budkowski explained that Alonso had a small issue following his first pit stop, which led them to turn down the power unit somewhat. "Then after the second stop, a sandwich wrap paper got stuck inside the rear brake duct of Fernando’s car, which led to high temperatures and caused some damage to the brake system, so we retired him for safety reasons.

[RedNEO]

Looks like they had 2 issues, the first started after the first pit stop.

https://www.thedrive.com/accelerator/39 ... ich-baggie

The Alpine team's new executive director Marcin Budkowski explained that Alonso had a small issue following his first pit stop, which led them to turn down the power unit somewhat. "Then after the second stop, a sandwich wrap paper got stuck inside the rear brake duct of Fernando’s car, which led to high temperatures and caused some damage to the brake system, so we retired him for safety reasons.

I rewatched the race and I can see clearly where the first issue occurred (at least I hope that’s when it happened). It was between lap 7/8. He dropped off Riccardo’s gearbox and was instantly passed by Stroll on the next lap down the pit straight. He then stopped around lap 11.

[PowerandtheGlory]

CAP is 140M this year. You got to presume that McLaren and Renault can easily get to that.

Alot of this year's car started getting developed after August 2020. We saw those conversation with Keys last year with McLaren, the new nose introduction cause they wouldn't have been able to do it in 2021. there was alot of Homologation conversations last year with when stuff had to be done by. Makes you wonder what Alpine was doing at that time.

You couldn't do wind tunnel stuff with the 2022 regs in 2020 but there is alot of NEW 2022 things that needed to get done.

Blackout made a very good point, this Tub is in it's 3ird year. It limits what you can do NEW with it.

It begs the question why weren’t they doing what McLaren was and requesting to the FIA to trade there tokens for new engine architecture installation instead. The engine was supposed to be introduced this year so they really should’ve been keen to make sure it’s installed like McLaren.

The old management was lacking in being able to react and adapt to changing circumstances that the pandemic caused.

Having a fixed tub isn’t a huge deal, when the engine and gearbox are bolted on.. and aero get put on top. The tub does decide the front susp points and the crash structure..
but it’s not a deal breaker.
It’s a shame after a solid test that the car was unbalanced, maybe the conditions caused the rear end instability?
The PU issues will be a concern especially as the car was praised last year for its speed at tracks like Monza and Circuit de Gilles villeneuve. I really hope they find the magic solution with the floor that some teams have done.
I remember that AlphaT ‘didn’t’ take the RB rear end upgrade this year. ( they did a front end upgrade) - so they kept what they had, made the floor modifications and got a new engine and look fast..
Alpine tested A LOT of parts over the weekend. I hope by race 3, they have a stable package..

[SmallSoldier]

But looking at Ocon despite several safety cars he still wasn’t able to come close to the top 10 which shows the car doesn’t deserve to be in the top 10 anyway and thanks to other drivers underperforming and Alonso’s brilliance it ended up in there. Lots of work to do.

People saying “just throw away this year and focus on next year” ... it’s not that simple. They also need to understand why they are slow so they don’t make the same mistake again next year.

Perfect! That's why I am worried about it. It is not easy task to cover 1.2 second defeat in Qualy and poor race speed in single year. They Alpine need to react fast else same for 2022 till 2025 for new rule change.

I hope they can.....

Yeah I also think they need to work on there quality control because Alonso saying the car felt different to testing probably means he is using the chassis that wasn’t used in testing and they haven’t been able to produce it at the same quality as that one if it’s having all these problems with brakes from day one ect

They had several changes between testing and the race on the floor area, maybe some of those upgrades didn’t work as expected or they still need to find the right setup for them


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