Alpine F1 team making changes "on the fly" amid nightmare Baku Friday
Alpine Formula 1 boss Otmar Szafnauer admits that his team made changes “on the fly” after a difficult Friday in Azerbaijan compromised its ability to optimise a new floor package.
However, he insisted that the Enstone outfit has no regrets about its decision to bring a significant upgrade for the A523 to a sprint weekend, despite knowing that there would be limited time to hone it.
All teams had just the single FP1 session in which to prepare for Friday afternoon’s qualifying.
Pierre Gasly missed much of the session after a hydraulic leak caused a fire, while his team-mate Esteban Ocon had to stay in the garage after an issue was spotted.
Prior to qualifying, the Alpine mechanics hurriedly fitted a new power unit and gearbox to Gasly’s car after its late return from its parking spot on track.
However, their efforts went unrewarded when Gasly crashed heavily early in Q1, leaving him on the back row of the grid for Sunday’s grand prix.
Ocon, meanwhile, recovered from the setback of limited practice running to qualify 12th, the team having taken some set-up gambles with the limited knowledge that it had.
Szafnauer admitted that the FP1 problems had made its life difficult.
“Unfortunately we had a hydraulic leak, which started a fire on Pierre's car,” he told Autosport.
“And then, when we brought Esteban in, we also noticed a potential problem on the rear of the gearbox, and elected to investigate it further before we let him go out again.
“And, as it turned out, it was a minor issue on Esteban's car. But there wasn't enough time for floor off, investigate, floor back on. By that time, the session was over. We lost half the session on both cars.”
Szafnauer said the lost track time was costly as the team was not able to complete its planned programme of homework with the new floor package across the two cars.
Otmar Szafnauer, Team Principal, Alpine F1 Team
Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images
"They were both on the backfoot because, when you bring an upgrade, one of the first things you've got to do is start doing dialling it in,” he said.
“We had an hour to dial in the upgrade, and it's not a small upgrade, it's a new floor.
“And with a new floor you've got to do all sorts of different set-up iterations to get it to perform, and we didn't have a chance to do that, unfortunately.
“And of our own making, we had reliability issues. But once you then don't have a chance to set the car up properly for the for the new upgrade, you're always on the backfoot."
Szafnauer admitted that the team had made its life difficult by bringing a new package to a sprint weekend while knowing that there would be limited practice running.
However, he insisted that with a smoother session there would have been enough time to optimise it.
"We made that choice,” he said. “And maybe it's bitten us, but we couldn't have predicted reliability issues. Had we known that we had a half hour of FP1, we would have made a different choice.
“So hindsight is a lovely thing here. But with an hour, we thought we had enough time to make the requisite set-up changes.
“I mean, we were making set-up changes on the fly in qualifying on Esteban's car. And he got quicker and quicker. He made a small mistake on the last corner, which cost him about two-and-a-half tenths on his Q2 lap.
“Had he not made that small mistake, and maybe everyone can say those things, he would have been in Q3. And he barely got out of Q1.
“And then we learned from that, made some set-up changes, got faster. So I look forward to dialling the new floor and seeing where we really are.
"Let's see how Saturday goes. We've got more time overnight to prepare than we did between the two sessions. So we'll get the cars ready and do some more work.”
In the light of the difficult day, Szafnauer questioned the wisdom of running a sprint at a challenging street venue.
"If the new format is one that we're going to have in the future I think we have to look carefully at what type of circuits we have that format," he said.
“Maybe you don't want it in Baku, Monaco, Singapore or Canada, places where if you do make a small mistake, you know your day's ruined. So we just have to be careful.”
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