Just 36 hours after launching their 2022 challenger the A522, the BWT Alpine F1 Team completed a highly successful opening day of pre-season testing at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, with veteran Fernando Alonso behind the wheel.
Alonso was the sole driver for Alpine on the opening day of the official shakedown, the Spaniard got to grips with the A522 at his home circuit, completing a very impressive 129 laps. The Double World Champion also got the opportunity to be the first of the team’s drivers to test their new RE22 power unit. Alonso thoroughly enjoyed his first day back after the winter break and is incredibly proud of what Alpine have achieved.
“It’s good to be back after such a long wait. We’ve spent a long time preparing for this moment at both factories and in the garage, a lot of hours have gone into this moment. The cars are very different to last year and we need to adjust to a lot of new characteristics.
“We still have a lot of work to do but this is why we are at testing. We completed some good mileage and our reliability has been quite strong for the first day of testing. Mileage and reliability is more important than performance in testing, so overall we’re quite pleased with the first day in our new car.”
“The feedback from Fernando was good” – Alpine’s Matt Harman
Alpine Technical Director, Matt Harman, like Alonso was very proud to see the A522 finally out on track, after two and a half long years of preparation ahead of this year’s dramatic technical regulation changes. Harmann was pleased with the overall reliability of the car on the opening day and is excited to see Esteban Ocon behind the wheel on Thursday.
“Today is the culmination of so much hard work over the last two and a half years by everyone at the team across Enstone and Viry. Congratulations to them for the immense effort in reaching this important milestone. For today, we’re very pleased with our lap count with 129 laps completed. We did have one or two issues to solve, which we were able to rectify quickly and that’s shown in our high lap count.
“The feedback from Fernando was good, he commented on overall balance and had good responses to different set-up ideas and tyre options. We did a lot of pre-validation work prior to arriving in Barcelona. That said, we had a few things we wanted to check and validate further, which is the aim at days like this. It’s been an impressive day for the team, a great milestone in the journey of the A522 and we’re looking forward to seeing Esteban in the car on Thursday.”
