25th February 2022, 12:26 | Written by Keith Collantine
Alpine have ended their participation in the first pre-season test with half a day still to run after a technical problem stopped Fernando Alonso’s car on Friday morning.
Advert | Become a Supporter & go ad-free The team confirmed Alonso asked to stop the car after suffering a loss of hydraulic pressure. The A522, which the team launched on Monday, was surrounded by a cloud of smoke while it was attended to by marshals. Alpine attributed the breakdown to a minor problem with the sealing of the system.
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“After further investigations in the garage following Fernando Alonso’s on-track stoppage earlier this morning, the team can confirm the issue was a problem with the hydraulics,” said the team in a statement. “A minor sealing issue led to a fire in the back of the car.”
Esteban Ocon was due to take over for the second half of the day, when teams are planning to simulate wet weather running at the track.
“The team has successfully completed 266 laps during the three days of the Barcelona shakedown,” Alpine added. “Repairs on the car will continue, and as a result we won’t be running for the remainder of the day. We look forward to be back in action at the next test in Bahrain.”
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Fer no.65 (@fer-no65) 25th February 2022, 12:29
That wasn’t EL PLAN
I didn’t expect from them anything but fighting for top 10 and 6-7 position in the WCC. Now, losing an entire day of testing is really bad considering this is a completely new car.
I think the hydraulic fluid in this case was the fuel and the sealing issue was in the engine…
A minor sealing issue at the back where the exhaust meets a now gaping hole where the engine was.
Fer no.65 (@fer-no65) 25th February 2022, 13:46
That wasn’t El Plan…
It’s still too early to say, but it seems that Alpine has not made any progress at all. The musical chairs of top personnel would certainly not have helped. Alonso fans would perhaps have to wait another year or the new engine regs for Alonso to win a title. But he could retire before that. So goodbye to those dreams. Despite being an Alonso fan, my eyes are now on Ferrari. With their beautiful new car and nostalgia-evoking livery I hope they challenge for the title.
Wow , a bit of over reaction not? A simple engine failure in testing , on the totally revampedRebault engine is quite normal. As they said, due to freezing on engines, they pushed for split turbos, and performance over reliability on every single component for the engine. They rather have failures for pushing hard and getting reliability later than having a reliable but not powerful enough engine. All good yet.
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