Alpine starts 2022 with a backlog: 'Had expected more direction'

In a new video by Peter Windsor, Formula 1 tech expert Craig Scarborough goes into more detail about Alpine's A522. According to Scarborough, the French team has not yet been developed to that level.

The winter test in Barcelona did not go as desired for Alpine. The team was not particularly fast, did not drive a huge number of laps and came to a standstill at the beginning of the third day with a smoking car. Fernando Alonso stood glumly next to his smoking A522 and the team was unable to return to action for the rest of the day.

Where Scarborough had expected a radical concept from Alpine after the designs of the past years, the A522 disappointed him a bit. They seem to have chosen a middle ground and remained fairly conventional in design. Scarborough also thinks that Alpine is a bit behind the competition at the beginning of the year.

The Brit does see an advantage of the new Renault engine, as the French team is finally opting for a split-turbo as Mercedes has been doing since 2014 and Honda later adopted. This makes the engine much more compact and therefore allows the chassis to be compressed as well. So this also has an aerodynamic advantage.