Pierre Gasly says the new chassis is lighter after the updates brought about in F1 Chinese GP, as Esteban Ocon asks to be cautious about it.
Alpine started the F1 2024 season with a heavier car which has certainly hurt them so far. They have been fighting to get out of Q1 and been far off the points position. Only in China, they looked a it racey and in contention for points after Q2 triumph.
They brought forward an update in China but only Ocon got it. While the expected gains was to be on the aerodynamics side, it didn’t come to that extent but the weight side saw two kilos being shaved off. The main aim is for Alpine to at least be at 798 kg.
The weight loss is being taken as a positive step and Gasly is expected to get it in Miami. “It is very straightforward as I said, it’s just a couple of kilos lighter and then just more aero, more points of downforce all around,” he said to media. “It’s most important that is working, we saw that from the first session.
“I was a bit impatient to get it but from Miami onwards I’ll be on that package. And we’ll keep working because I still want more than what we were seeing so we still need to find more performance. It does feel that way, as the first few races we were so on the back foot, we couldn’t really attack, we couldn’t really defend our position.
“Whereas it [the new chassis] just brings us a couple of tenths, which means we can be slightly closer, we can be a bit more in the mix. And on days like in China, we can see that we’re actually not that far from the points. There is a big gap with the top five so it seems like at least for the next couple of months we’ll be fighting for small points.
“But it will be crucial and definitely make a big difference at the end of the year. So yeah, definitely looking forward to Miami. It is chassis and floor, so it is quite heavy and it is actually even more than expected, so it was a nice surprise arriving in China, but the car was overall too heavy at the start of the year and now we getting close to where is our target,” summed up Gasly.
His teammate Ocon was all praise for the team to get the update on time, but didn’t wish to get ahead of themselves. He saw some benefits but wants bigger digging to see if they are in the right course. The weight loss is a certain plus though.
“We need to dig into exactly what has been better,” said Ocon. “For sure, the weight has been an improvement. On the rest we need further analysis to exactly see if it has brought a clear performance advantage. Both cars were in good shape in that weekend, so we need to see exactly.
“It is a very good effort, on that side of weight-wise, it is definitely a step-improvement. We’re obviously expecting more on the aero side, but we need to dig in to see if we were managing to extract the maximum from it, and if it brought the performance we thought it did bring in the simulator. I think there was probably more in the simulator that we found compared to the track,” summed up Ocon.
Here’s Pierre Gasly on scary pit stop
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