The Chinese Grand Prix saw Alpine have a spare car available for the first time this season. At a time when Williams Racing lack of third chassis made global headlines, this was obviously encouraging news for fans of the French manufacturer. Not only this but for Esteban Ocon, his A524 had a new floor and was lighter.
Alpine’s performance technical director, Ciaron Pilbeam revealed this information ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix and has given hope that the team once labelled as worst of the grid in 2024 would now be battling for P6 in the F1 Constructors’ Championship
Ocon’s update in China was a testament to the hard work of the Alpine crew back in the factory seeing how it came one race ahead of schedule as explained by Pilbeam in his remarks from last weekend.
“This has been coming for some time now,” stated Pilbeam. “Obviously, the sooner you can get things the better and the factory’s done a good job getting one here because it was originally scheduled for Miami and we will have both cars on it by then but no it’s just part of our routine aero development.”
Due to the fact the update was only available for one of the team’s challengers, it was put to Pilbeam that it may be a good thing to be able to make a comparison between the two on the same track and with the same track condition.
“I guess we’ll take the opportunity to compare it to the older floor – the previous spec – but if we could have had two we would have done – you’d always take the performance,” Pilbeam explained of the situation.
As a result of the update bringing an improvement in aero performance, Pilbeam admitted it’s an improvement in ‘performance everywhere’.
These remarks were made on the Friday of the Chinese Grand Prix weekend and by the time the chequered flag fell, the team would have seen Ocon cross the line P11 – just 2.3 seconds from scoring a point. Therefore, the upgrade has clearly made a difference but Pilbeam also highlighted on media day where further gains need to be made.
“I think we understand mostly where our problems are,” Pilbeam said. “And it’s probably more in the low speed corners and then this update and what we have coming later will improve overall performance I’d say.”
Alpine were riding their luck early in the season and who knows what would have happened had they had an incident requiring the use of a third chassis – which they did not have. However, those concerns are quelled for the future now as Pilbeam admitted the team had a third chassis for the first time this season and also looked ahead as he said: “We’ve got quite a lot going on in the wind tunnel and CFD at the moment. Obviously, we’ll be bringing updates to the car as quickly as we can.”
Alpine has had more drama off track in recent months than on track with changes at the top but Pilbeam was clear everyone knows the task at hand.
“Obviously, I guess it’s the changes in senior management and technical that everybody knows about but other than that it’s a case of just getting on with our regular development as best we can and making sure that the company is structured in a way that we can improve as efficiently and as quickly as we can.”
The improvement after China was clear to see and now with Pierre Gasly being given the same upgrades as his teammate – Alpine have both drivers on a level playing field in Miami and points could certainly be within their grasp. Not only this but having been one of the only team not to have reached the minimum weight allowed by the FIA on its single-seater – a lighter car as seen in Shanghai is vital.
“The car’s progressed already,” Pilbeam added. “In terms of weight, as I say, that’s an ongoing process there’s no one big step but lots of little ones…I don’t want to go into too much detail but we’ll soon be in a place that we’re happy with to be able to give ourselves a bit of flexibility as well as just running on the limit.”
