Fernando Alonso, Alpine, Albert Park, 2022

Alpine bringing floor upgrade to Imola as team targets better race pace

RaceFans Round-up

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In the round-up: Alpine will run development parts in the single hour of practice before qualifying tomorrow.

In brief

Alpine bringing upgrade to Imola

Alpine’s chief technical officer Pay Fry says the team needs to bring its race pace up to the same level as its qualifying form.

“Clearly our qualifying performance is relatively competitive since we’ve had both cars regularly in Q3,” said Fry. “Had we got things right in Melbourne, we could have been as high as the second row.

“We need to improve our race pace and we’re investigating what can be done. There’s always the right balance to be found between qualifying pace and race pace and we need to continue to work on this to get comfortable with the car on low and high fuel.”

The team will have an upgrade for its A522 chassis at the fourth race of the season this weekend. “We’re working through bringing weight-saving items to the car when and where we can,” he said.

“Although it’s a sprint race weekend we still have a new floor upgrade that we will test, so we’ll see how that fares in the sole Friday practice session. It’s a step in the right direction and it will be interesting to see how it performs on-track.”

Tsunoda more confident about sprint format in second year

Yuki Tsunoda feels more confident about tackling sprint qualifying weekends in his second season as an F1 driver.

“Last year, I was worried about the sprint qualifying with only having one practice session before qualifying,” Tsunoda admitted. “But this season I feel much more confident, also because Imola is a track I know well as I have driven a lot of laps there. Also, I now know how to approach the sprint weekends and hopefully it will end in points for us.”

Vettel relishing ‘eighties throwback’ at Imola

Driving Formula 1’s new ground effect era cars appeals to Sebastian Vettel’s sense of the sport’s history.

“Imola is a real test of driver and machine, and that’s what every F1 circuit should be,” the Aston Martin driver said. “It’s hard to imagine we’d ever be racing around Imola in ground effect cars – that’s really something special, and a bit of a throwback to the 1980s, which is cool.”

Beth Paretta and Lyn St James launch Women in Motorsport North America

Former Le Mans Dodge Viper project leader and owner of IndyCar team Paretta Autosport Beth Paretta and former IndyCar driver Lyn St James have today announced the launch of Women in Motorsport North America. The initiative is intended to act as a resource for any women looking for information, mentoring or advice on entering a career in motorsport in any capacity.

“We are proud to have such a strong, varied working group of professional women and men who have helped shape our purpose and strategy. Our strength is in our members and the breadth of their perspectives across many disciplines including engineers, drivers, team management, PR, marketing, track operations, sponsor relations, and event promotions,” Paretta explained.

“As we strive to increase opportunities for women to work in motorsports, WIMNA will be a resource for people considering or advancing their careers,” she continued. “The organisation will help us all work together to identify, train, and support new talent to continue to produce a pipeline of future experts in our sport.”

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Comment of the day

Reflecting on one fan’s account of the 1994 San Marino Grand Prix weekend, Ozzmosis points out more marshals have been lost to fatal than F1 drivers in the years since.

Often overlooked is the death of a number of F1 marshals in modern times. The 2000 Italian, 2001 Australian and 2013 Canadian grands prix all overshadowed by marshal fatalities.

The article echoes my memory of attending my first grand prix in Melbourne in 1996 – sort of. I was too young to buy a ticket but travelled to the Albert Park circuit by train on race day, riding my mountain bike around the circuit perimeter during the race. I was able to catch a glimpse of the cars from the run-off at the northern end of Lakeside Drive. The sound was incredible, and the speed hard to believe. Though compared to modern F1 cars, the 1996 cars were slow!

I had no idea who won the race until I got home.
Ozzmosis

Happy birthday!

Happy birthday to Vincent, The Kef, Cyberaxiom and Dylan Mota!

Author information

Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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4 comments on “Alpine bringing floor upgrade to Imola as team targets better race pace”

  1. Derek Edwards
    21st April 2022, 0:21

    Thank you for the link about Marcel Albers, so strange to think that it was thirty years ago. I still very clearly remember hearing the news. It’s good to know that he has not been forgotten.

  2. The Marcel Albers article is as beautiful as it is tragic. He sounded like an amazing person as well as a sadly lost talent.

  3. Time to put the noise complaint matter to bed, although I doubt this will be the last time.
    I already made this point in yesterday’s round-up, but the whole thing would be more understandable if V12s, V10s, or V8s were still in use, but not with V6 turbo hybrids that don’t even require wearing earplugs on trackside.

    1. My mother lives about 2 miles from the dragstrip where they hold the Gatornationals, and you simply can’t hear the dragsters.

      And no formula one car can match a top fuel dragster when it spins up– the last reporter who tried to measure the sound had an issue, as his meter only went to 140 dB, and it pegged out.

      Estimates are that the dragsters can hit 150 dB, or about 2.3 on the Richter scale.

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