The 2022 season has started with a clear dominance of Ferrari in the standings, although Red Bull has shown potential to stand up to them. Alpine, however, is still far away and Fernando Alonso is aware of it.
The first three races of the season have yielded a surprising result in this start of the regulation era. And it is that, after so many years of domination by Mercedes, now it is ferrari who is proving to be the strongest team.
As in past seasons, Red Bull shows enough potential to stand up to the reference team on the grid, but several reliability issues They have weighed heavily on Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez.
Alpine, one second behind Ferrari
Behind Red Bull there is a large gap with respect to the third team, which at this start of the season is being Mercedes. Yes indeed, Alpine has shown potential to dispute that position with the eighth world champions and there are those who even consider looking at Ferrari.
“Matching the pace of Ferrari, I think it’s going to be difficult because, obviously, we are eight tenths or a second behind right nowlooking at the first races in the qualifying performance, ”Fernando Alonso responds to such a daring insinuation.
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Indeed, in the first three races, Alpine has been 0.951 seconds behind Ferrari on average in qualifying conditions, so it seems overly optimistic think of something like that. Although, yes, in Australia Fernando Alonso showed potential to get on the podium and only a mechanical failure frustrated that plan.
It’s not going to happen, but what if it is?
But in any case, Fernando Alonso does not completely rule out such a possibilitybecause he knows that the new regulation offers a lot of room for improvement to the single-seaters and Alpine has many novelties pending for the car.
“Closing that gap will be too optimistic, but we’ll see. We have to keep working, and these cars are so recent that we may find something much bigger than we thought at first, when we tested it in the wind tunnel. And maybe we will take a big step, “says Fernando Alonso.
One of those planned developments is a new lighter floor, which will premiere in Imola this coming weekend. Of course, there will only be one unit and Alpine must decide if it will be Fernando Alonso or Esteban Ocon the pilot who uses it.
«It will only be for a car, for now. This update was planned for Miami, but we have been able to anticipate it for Imola”, explains Alan Permane, Alpine sporting director.