The first free practice session in Bahrain gave Alpine a scare, which saw the new sidepod released this weekend disintegrate on Esteban Ocon’s car.
We already told you that, during the first lap of filming in Free Practice 1 of the Bahrain Grand Prix, the right pontoon of the Alpine A522 Esteban Ocon’s was blown up and forced the French driver to fall back on an old spec.
Instead, Fernando Alonso It had no problem with the same aerodynamic specification, so the team has decided to continue with the most evolved version.
“This could have gone wrong in the tests and no one would have noticed”
This has been confirmed by Otmar Szafnauer, who has indicated that Alpine considers that “It was something punctual. We are still trying to figure out the cause and I don’t know if the pontoon was a bit damaged or if he didn’t have all the fixings on it. But Fernando used the same one».
“We made sure everything was fixed. But it’s still good to find the cause. Once you know it, you are 100% sure that it is fixed, ”reiterates the director of Alpine F1.
New unit on the way
Alpine’s pace on this first day has been promising, with Fernando Alonso proving to be competitive both in one lap and in race conditions. The Spanish rider was fifth in the second session with the new pontoons, with Esteban Ocon 12th with the old ones.
Thus, Szafanauer has confirmed that the team is already expecting a new unit for the evolved pontoon, although it is not certain that it will arrive in time to be used in qualifying and the race.
“We are trying to get another pontoon (new spec)”, points out the Romanian engineer. “This could have gone wrong in the tests. No one would have noticed, we would have done a lap out, wondered what was going on, fixed it, come here and no one would have noticed.”
“But when you release new things on the race track without prior testing, these things can happen,” says Szafnauer, downplaying the incident.