F1 News: Alpine Confident In Closing Performance Deficit In 2024
During the A524 launch, Alpine team principal Bruno Famin expressed his belief in the team's potential for performance improvement and narrowing the gap in the front despite the limitations they encounter regarding enhancements to power units.
Key Takeaways:
- Alpine team principal Bruno Famin expressed optimism during the A524 launch regarding the team's potential to improve performance despite limitations in power unit enhancements.
- The FIA's analysis of Alpine's Renault-supplied engine revealed a significant performance deficit of 20-33bhp compared to rivals like Honda, Ferrari, and Mercedes.
- Despite facing an underpowered engine and unsuccessful attempts to equalize engine performance, Famin believes that marginal improvements through software tweaks and a focus on overall car performance aspects like weight distribution and energy management can still yield better results for Alpine.
The FIA conducted an analysis of Alpine's engine performance last year, which is supplied by Renault, and identified a significant performance deficit of around 20-33bhp compared to power units supplied by Honda, Ferrari, and Mercedes.
Alpine also took up the matter of engine equalization last year with the F1 Commission but failed to receive support from the other teams. Now though, the team is left with an underpowered engine but, Famin believes that slight tweaks in the software could bring about marginal improvements. Speaking to the media, he said:
"We were lacking on the recovery side, and we are still lacking. Because with the regulation the way it is, we are trying to improve that because we are able to homologate new software per-year now.
"This is something we have worked on to try and reduce the gap a bit, but there will be no major differences with the previous year because the power unit is frozen. We can we can play a bit on the MGU-H but that's all."
While the drop in power cannot be compensated by any other means, Famin believes that the team can churn better results from the A524 if it focuses on other aspects that can influence performance. He added:
"You cannot offset it [power deficit] because if you can save weight, you will work on the weight distribution a bit more.
"But if you have 'x' kilowatts less than the other, you will always do better with 'x' kilowatts more. It is what it is but at the end of the story, there is no need to focus on that.
"What we need to do is a competitive car as a whole, chassis and road tyre management, power unit, energy recovery and so on. We need to improve the global integration on the car."
Alpine Press Image