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Esteban Ocon is missing Alpine’s upgraded sidepods until a replacement for the one that broke apart in opening practice can be shipped to the Bahrain Grand Prix.
Ocon caused a red flag in FP1 on Friday when his A522 shed bodywork down the main straight, including a large chunk of the sidepod.
🚩 RED FLAG 🚩
Esteban Ocon loses a big chunk of sidepod 🤯
The debris litters the start-finish straight, so the session is paused as clean-up begins#BahrainGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/ZHWKqIIZzr
— Formula 1 (@F1) March 18, 2022
Alpine was running new sidepods on both cars for the first time after bringing an upgrade following the final pre-season test last week.
Ocon had to revert to the older testing specification for the rest of FP1 and will run the car in that form in FP2 but team-mate Fernando Alonso is using the upgraded sidepods still.
Alpine team boss Otmar Szafnauer hopes that will not be the case for the rest of the weekend “because we’re looking to get another sidepod out here”.
“I think it was a one off. We’re still trying to figure out the root cause and I don’t know if it was a bit damaged, the pod, or if it didn’t have all its fixings,” said Szafnauer.
“But Fernando ran the same one because it was an upgraded sidepod. And once that happened to Esteban, Fernando wasn’t out yet. So we made sure it was all fixed and all fitted properly. And it was fine.
“So I think it’s a one off. But it’s still nice to always find the root cause. And once you know that, then you’re 100% sure it’s fixed.”
Szafnauer added: “We ran the previous spec pod here in testing all the time. And then these, because you develop late, they come out on the freight, bolt them on for the first time. So it was the first time.
“Because the cars are so new, the developments will come thick and fast up and down the pitlane. People will be bringing developments all the time.
“And I learned a long time ago in this game that unless you run stuff in testing, if you put it on for the first time in a situation like this, things can go wrong.
“I mean, that could have gone wrong in testing, no one would have noticed. You would have done an out-lap, ‘what’s going on?’, we fix it, you come here and you don’t notice.
“But when you’re having performance at the racetrack without testing, then some of these things can slip through.”
GARY ANDERSON ON ALPINE’S SIDEPODS
Alpine has added an extra small exit and vane on the floor edge to work the front corner of the floor that little bit more (red arrow).
This will also generate a stronger vortex running down the floor edge and probably allow Alpine to run the rear of the car a couple of millimetres higher without losing overall downforce. More importantly, that will reduce the risk of porpoising.
The area just in front and inside the rear tyre (blue arrow) also looks to have been altered. It looks a little shorter and to have more angle on this section.
This acts like a mini diffuser and adds to the overall expansion of the diffuser, both together accelerating airflow underneath the floor to generate downforce.
It’s difficult to see in detail, but I wouldn’t be surprised if the profile on the sidepod undercut (green ellipse) is now just a little more abrupt. Again, this should increase the outwash, leading to potentially working the front corner of the floor harder.
Sometimes, all these developments come at a cost. In this case, it was Ocon losing part of the sidepod.
When you keep changing things these sort of problems can happen. It can be because there are no fixings in a critical place or simply one fixing did not get fastened or came undone.
Either way, I’m sure it won’t be too difficult to fit an extra fixing if that is what is required.
Even simpler is what Red Bull does every time the car runs: tape every joint. That’s a bit of a task, but it stops airflow from getting into the joins and ripping the body to pieces.
The loss of the sidepod allowed us to see under the skin and from that we could see Alpine doesn’t have anything trick as far as cooling is concerned.
The air comes in, there’s a radiator for it to go through and it then passes over the exhaust pipes, with the underbody airflow system being as basic as this.
If for some reason the radiator exit duct wasn’t quite big enough it would create a positive pressure under the sidepods and engine cover, which could also very quickly lead to the sidepod going missing.
I’m surprised Alpine is not trying to keep the heat in the exhaust system. More heat means more energy for driving the turbo, so potentially you would get more from the MGU-H.
